All Quiet on the Eastern Front
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Even wanted fugitives deserve to spend a peaceful holiday with family; even if it isn't their own family. Follows up "Illusions and Hallucinations".
1. Chapter 1

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Last night Face and Murdock had managed to retrieve a private Gulfstream jet for the A-Team's own personal use. This use being an all night, nonstop flight from Los Angles to New York; Murdock had estimated they would be in New York around the time the sun came up. They still had another hour to go but it looked like they were going to make it on time, surprisingly. The reason for their trip? To an outsider that would be a very long story, to make it short the explanation was simple; they had kidnapped a friend and were flying her home to see her parents for Thanksgiving, and to make sure it was a surprise for the parents, they were arriving a day ahead of the intended schedule. Hannibal had figured it was a good idea for all of them to go; a little change of scenery would do them all some good, and if that scenery just so happened to be 3,000 miles away from Decker and the MPs, then so much the better.

Hannibal looked over to the other side of the cockpit and noticed that their pilot's head was starting to droop and his eyes were like a pair of shutters slammed shut by the wind. He leaned over and nudged the pilot, "Murdock."

"Huh-huh-huh," Murdock opened his eyes and sat up straight, "I can see the road…oh, Hannibal, it's you."

"You okay, Captain?" Hannibal asked, "You sure you'll be able to make it the rest of the flight?"

"Sure, Hannibal," Murdock rubbed one eye with a free hand and said, "We've only got about another 500 miles, no problem."

"If you're sure," Hannibal said as he got up, "But all the same I'm going to go see if I can wake up that copilot of yours incase we need her assistance to get us to New York."

"Yeah, if that's what you want to do, Colonel," Murdock tiredly replied as he returned his attention onto the sky before him.

Hannibal made his way out of the cockpit and into the cabin where the passengers were still asleep and blissfully unaware of their current predicament. He stepped lightly past Face and Amy, who were still leaning against each other as they slept, and past B.A., who had been knocked out twice since they took off, and Hannibal was worried a third time might _not_ be a charm. Finally he reached their other passenger, Jean Rhodes, the whole reason they were making this trip in the first place. In a relatively short time this woman had built up quite a history in association with the A-Team: from missing person to fugitive to free woman, and more recently from Murdock's wife to now ex-wife as now in the eyes of the law and the state of California, theirs had been a marriage that never existed. Rather an overachiever for being so young, Hannibal thought with a small smirk as he tapped the woman on the cheek to wake her up.

"Hmm…what is it, Hannibal?" Jean asked as she snapped awake.

"We're about an hour out of New York," he told her, "Murdock's been at the controls all night, what say you go help him?"

Jean stretched her arms over her head and yawned and nodded, "Alright."

She got up and walked up the aisle to the cockpit and asked as she entered the room, "How's it going, Murdock?"

"Well the movie's been cancelled on account of rain and dinner's going to be late because we're having trouble getting fresh octopus at this altitude, but other than that everything's fine like an aged wine," Murdock answered, then turned his head and looked at her, "How're you?"

"I'm fine," she answered as she sat down beside him and got herself strapped in, "Hannibal says we'll be there in another hour, does that sound right?"

"Somewhere around there," the pilot answered, "Incidentally, how early do your parents get up?"

"Oh I don't know," Jean said as she ran a hand through her hair, "I'm sure whenever we get to the house they ought to be up."

"That's what I said," Murdock told her.

Jean looked over at him and said, "You know, I know this is a little late but I'm starting to rethink this whole visit."

"How come?" Murdock asked.

"I just don't know that I want to be with these people, you know?" Jean asked.

Murdock choked on a laugh that didn't come all the way out and he reminded her, "These aren't strangers off the street, they're your parents."

"They might as well be," Jean told him, "They're strangers to me, I haven't seen them in so long."

"Well that doesn't change anything," Murdock said, "They're still your parents, you're still their daughter."

"I know, but so much has changed since I moved out to L.A.," she replied, "They're not going to know me other than what I look like, what if I don't know them anymore either?"

"Oh that's not going to happen," he assured her.

"Well what happens if they don't like me anymore now that I've come back?" Jean asked, "I mean they're going to know I'm different now."

"That won't happen either," Murdock told her, "They're your parents, they love you no matter what."

"Well there's going to be a lot more of me to deal with than there used to be. I mean what happens if while we're there, I start having flashbacks again?" she asked, "That's not something they can deal with, and I don't want to have to tell them about that."

"Then don't," Murdock said, "It's as easy as that."

Jean thought of something else and asked him, "What about you guys? What if _you_ start having flashbacks? What if you wake up in the middle of the night screaming and get the whole house up?"

"That's an easy situation to avert," Murdock answered, "The guys know how to handle that."

Jean looked to him and asked, "What if _I_ wake up in the night screaming and get everybody up?"

He looked to her through the corner of his eyes and said, "_I_ know how to handle that. Saint, you're worrying all for nothing, everything's going to be fine, you'll see."

"It'll be like staying with strangers," she said, "To tell you the truth, Murdock, I'm probably closer to you and those three wise guys you call friends than my own family, and what does that say about me?"

Murdock smiled at her and said, "You ever hear of the empty nest syndrome?"

"No," Jean said.

"That's something parents go through when their kids grow up and move out and the house suddenly becomes big and empty and lonely," Murdock explained, "Everybody always looks at it from the parent's view, they never think about how the kids are affected at the same time. Everybody sees the kids going out into the world and making their place in it, they never think about how excruciating _that_ experience is, and then coming home again after being gone so long, and facing the changes that have happened in the meantime. I think what you're going through now is something similar. But I'll bet you as soon as you get home and see your folks, everything will be alright."

"I hope you're right, Murdock," Jean replied, the tension evident in her voice.

He was confident about his answer and he told her, "Everything's going to work out just fine, you'll see."

"Assuming the big mudsucker back there doesn't wake up before we land," Jean said.

"Oh don't worry about that," Murdock said, "I've become an expert at landing these babies on a dime at a moment's notice…of course if he starts to wake up we may have to make due with the old heart attack routine."

"The what?" Jean asked.

"Amy can tell you about that one," he told her, "Now, I figure we've got about another hour before we come in for a landing, so why don't you go on back to sleep until then?"

"I don't _want_ to go back to sleep," Jean answered, "I'm not tired anymore."

"I'll bet I can put you to sleep," Murdock said with a small smirk on his face.

"Oh yeah, how?" she asked.

Murdock answered that questioned by belting out in a slow, crooning voice, "Goodnight, sweetheart, all my prayers are for you, goodnight, sweetheart, I'll be watching o'er you." As he sang, he glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Jean slump to the side in her seat and her eyes closed, he grinned but fought back the urge to laugh. Worked like a charm every time.

* * *

As it turned out, B.A. stayed unconscious for the remainder of the flight, but he woke up when they started to touch down for the landing. Murdock had gotten clearance to land so they didn't have to deal with a sudden parade of airport officials coming out to inspect them, so they sidestepped the old heart attack routine and instead just put the stairs down and let everybody make a break for it to get off the plane before B.A. got loose from his restraints.

"Ladies and gentlemen this is your pilot speaking," Murdock said as he stood up in the cockpit and made his way over to the exit as well, "Thank you for flying Murdock Airlines, please watch your step on the way down and let's get the hell out of here before the mudsucker tries to rip us to pieces," and he and Jean were among the last off the plane.

On the plane they could hear B.A. screaming as he got loose and made his way to the front of the plane and came charging down the stairs and directly at Murdock, screaming at him, "You crazy fool! What did you do, Murdock? I told you I wasn't flying no more, sucker, I'll get you, Murdock!"

Instinctively, Murdock took a step back so he was basically hiding behind Jean, who went to the front of the line and got up in B.A.'s face and pointed to her own, reminding him, "Eye, eye, the eye!"

B.A. stepped to the side and Murdock did the same, dragging Jean along to match every step he took, like a human shield. B.A. got tired of it and told him, "Come over here, Murdock, quit hiding behind her."

"Not until you calm down, B.A.," Murdock told him, "Besides, right now this is the _safest_ place for me to be."

Jean smirked at him and added, "That's right, sucker, you're the offensive, I'm the defensive, and I go deeper than the mat to protect my player."

Murdock stuck his tongue out at B.A. in an 'I told you so' manner, but B.A. told him, "Murdock, you stick your tongue out at me one more time, and I'll rip it out!"

"That would hurt," Murdock noted as he crouched down lower to shield himself against his ex-wife.

"Alright, that's enough out of all of you," Hannibal told them, and addressing B.A. specifically he said, "We're here now, and that's all that matters, and as planned we got here _on_ schedule, something we would _not_ have been able to do if we had driven out here. Now come on, B.A., Jean's parents are waiting on us, let's not disappoint them."

"Uh…" Amy raised her hand and asked Hannibal, "How're we going to get there? We can't all fit in a cab."

"We could all fit in it and just have B.A. _push_ it all the way to the house," Murdock suggested.

B.A. glared at him and growled, Murdock took a step back with his arms wrapped so tightly around Jean's waist that he lifted her off the ground for a couple of seconds.

"I'm sure there's a place nearby where we can rent a car," Hannibal said, "We might only be here for a couple of days but it would still be a lot more convenient than taxis."

"That's for sure," Jean agreed, "You can't ever get one when you need it, and when you don't want them they're everywhere, just like children."

"First," Face said with a slight shiver, "I think it would be a good idea to get the rest of our stuff out of the plane, including our coats." He turned to Jean and said, "You weren't kidding when you said the weather here was different from L.A."

"Yeah, but at least you were packed for this trip," Jean reminded him, "I don't have anything with me."

"Well…" Murdock said, "That's not exactly true." Jean looked at him inquisitively and he explained, "I took the liberty of removing a few things from your closet before I left your house and went to stay with Face," he explained, "It was all part of the plan."

Jean turned and glared at Hannibal and said to him, "I hate to think what would happen if that brain of yours would ever shut down and cease to come up with a plan for everything."

Hannibal just grinned at her and replied, "Well I can promise you as long as I have any say in it, that'll never happen. Alright, since B.A.'s out of the plane now, Face, you and Murdock go and get our stuff, we've got to get the car and get moving if we're going to get to the house on time."

* * *

During the drive to the Rhodes' home, Face put the window down on his side of the car and looked out at the scenery passing them by. For all their traveling, he still could never get used to fall and winter in other parts of the country; he looked on in awe at the colored leaves that were still half-covering the trees, the rest laying in piles and clumps on the ground. The grass was half brown and dead, and some parts of the grass had bits of frost on it, he'd known when they got off the plane that it was cold but he didn't know it was that cold here yet. He looked up at the sky as if he was expecting snow to just drop out of nowhere, but the skies were clear and blue and the sun was up and high, causing a sharp glare, so he put on his sunglasses and sat back with Amy, Murdock and Jean, who were all sardined in the backseat, and enjoyed the ride.

Hannibal looked at Jean in the rear mirror and commented to her reflection, "What say you, Jean? Has the place changed since you were last here?"

"A bit," she answered, "Last time I was here it was spring and nothing had really grown back yet. You ain't seen depressing until you've seen bald trees and no flowers for four months."

"I knew there was a reason we stayed in California," Face remarked smartly.

He heard a sharp CLICK noise and turned to see it was Amy snapping pictures with a camera she'd brought with her.

"What're you doing?" he asked.

"I figured if I could get something for a story while we're here," Amy said, "I can write this off as a business trip."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Amy," Jean said, "This may be New York, but we're in a very _boring_ part of it, nothing interesting _ever_ happens around here, that's why I had to get out in the first place."

Amy shrugged nonchalantly and put her camera away, "Oh well, then I'll have something to add to my photo album when I get back home."

Jean pointed up ahead and told Hannibal, "That's it, that's the house!"

As they went up the block, Hannibal gazed out his window at the place; a commonplace two story home in the middle of the street, perfect for the typical American family with a husband and wife and 2.3 children. He noticed the house was slightly smaller than Jean's home back in Los Angeles; which just proved that dirty money _could_ be put to good purposes.

"They didn't know we were coming," Jean said.

"Oh they knew," Hannibal told her, "They just thought it was going to be tomorrow. So this is still going to be a surprise for them." He reached over and hit the car's horn twice, then everybody started to pile out of the car.

Face went around to the trunk to get their bags out, and Hannibal saw the front door open and Mrs. Rhodes, an attractive woman in her mid 40s, come out; she got halfway down the steps and stopped in shock when she saw her daughter, then she ran down to the curb to greet them all.

"Oh my God, Jean!" she exclaimed as she stopped short of colliding with her daughter and hugged her.

"Hi, Mom!" Jean replied as she returned the hug.

Hannibal smiled as he watched this. He hadn't seen Jean's mother for well over a year, but he was pleased to note she seemed to be aging very well. Getting her daughter returned to her had taken off the 20 years losing her had put on, and she appeared to be frozen in the better outcome for the time being.

"Oh!" Mrs. Rhodes pulled back from her daughter and said, "But they said you weren't coming until tomorrow."

Jean turned her head and said in a voice that oozed trouble, "Hannibal."

Hannibal just shrugged with a sly grin on his face and said, "My mistake."

"Mom, you remember everybody," Jean said, "Hannibal, Face, Murdock, B.A."

"And this," Hannibal grabbed Amy by the arm and gave her a little shove to the front to be seen, "Is our friend, Amy Allen, she works for the Los Angeles Courier Express, she's a reporter, on leave and on vacation with the rest of us for the weekend."

"It's very nice to meet you, Miss Allen," Mrs. Rhodes said as she shook Amy's hand, "Come on in, everybody."

Jean, Murdock, Face and B.A. followed her up to the house, Amy and Hannibal remained behind and she told Hannibal, "This is really nice what you did for her."

"Well I have to confess," Hannibal said coyly, "It wasn't _just_ for Jean's benefit."

"It wasn't?" Amy asked.

"No, you see, Amy," Hannibal said, "I don't know if you realize this, but this is going to be the first Thanksgiving Face has ever spent with a family."

Amy blinked, "Really?"

"Yeah, you know he was an orphan," Hannibal said, "So in terms of, for lack of other examples, family holidays, he's had it the worst, Murdock had his grandparents, B.A. had his mother."

"And you?" Amy asked.

"I had a mother too," Hannibal said, "What do you think, I just hatched from an egg one day?"

Amy laughed and said, "You know what I mean. One of these days, Hannibal Smith, I'm going to find out what your history is."

"Well if I may give you a little friendly advice, Miss Allen," Hannibal smirked as he bit down on his cigar, "Don't hold your breath." He chuckled and put his arm around her and said, "Come on, kid, let's see what trouble the others have already gotten into only being here two minutes."


	2. Chapter 2

"We just missed my dad," Jean told Hannibal when he and Amy came in the door, "He already left for work."

"Oh that's too bad," Hannibal said, "I was hoping to see how _he's_ been faring over the past year."

Mrs. Rhodes laughed and replied, "He won't be home until tonight, but I can call him down at the office and let him know you're all here."

"No that's alright," Hannibal said quickly as she moved for the phone, "I wouldn't do that, Mrs. Rhodes."

She looked back at him puzzled as she put the receiver back down and said, "Why, what's the ma…you think the phone's been tapped?"

"It's unlikely it has been," Hannibal told her, "But I'd prefer not taking any chances, I'd like to spend tomorrow here as a nice quiet holiday, not facing down the 5th Marine division. In any case, don't bother him, let it be a surprise when he gets home."

Mrs. Rhodes turned towards her daughter and saw Jean reach into her pocket and pull out a gun and put it on the table and she commented to Murdock, "I knew there was a reason I was sore, I slept with that in my pocket the whole way out here."

Hannibal didn't miss the look on Mrs. Rhodes' face when she saw the gun, it was as if her daughter had just placed a fat mangy rat on the table instead.

"Jean," she said, a little shock in her voice, "Is that your gun?"

"Yeah," Jean answered, and she tried to explain what it was for, but then Murdock and Face both started talking over her, she slapped them both and told them to back off, and she explained to her mother, "Guns are a very common thing in California, Mom, _everybody_ there has guns, they're as common as breathing out there. Besides, there are a lot of weirdoes out there, even more I think than there are here in New York." She opened the chamber to unload it and when she did, she did a double take and said, "Hey wait a minute," she looked up to her mother and said, "I forgot, this one isn't loaded with live rounds."

"How can you tell?" Amy asked, "Are those blanks?"

"No," Jean answered, "Wax."

"Wax?" Face repeated.

"Yes wax," Jean told him, "They're very easy to make, they hurt like hell but they're not generally lethal, so if somebody tries breaking into my house, he _will_ live to see another day, but I doubt he'll be any too eager to come back and try it again."

For some reason this little fact set well with her mother and she seemed to take a deep breath of relief at that announcement. Jean spilled the wax bullets on the table and murmured to Murdock, "A fine thing, I go out last night thinking I'm going to be walking into the middle of a massacre and I've got _wax_ bullets, that would've been a _fine_ kettle of fish."

Mrs. Rhodes smiled nervously and wrung her hands as she explained to everybody, "I'm afraid we're going to be a little short on rooms tonight, I had thought only five of you were coming…I suppose if Miss Allen doesn't mind, she could bunk with Jean up in her room."

"Oh that'll be fine, Mrs. Rhodes," Amy answered, "As long as Jean doesn't mind."

Jean resisted the urge to say what she was thinking and instead said, "That'll be fine, the bed's big enough for two people."

"Uh, speaking of which," Hannibal spoke up, "Murdock flew us all night to get here, Jean, would you mind letting him sleep it off up in your room? I have a feeling that's the only way he's going to get any peace and quiet today."

Jean nodded, "Sure, Hannibal, I'll show him up, come on, Murdock."

Murdock closed his eyes and leaned back so far he about fell down, and said as he turned and followed behind her, "Bless you, child."

"Oh!" Hannibal called after them, "And Jean."

"What?"

"In keeping with Murdock's outpatient therapy, would you mind staying with him while he sleeps?"

Jean didn't get it but she knew that Hannibal was doing _something_ to keep her cover so her mother wouldn't suspect anything, and she finally nodded in understanding and answered, "Sure, Hannibal, I'll stay with him." And she led Murdock to the stairs in the hall leading up to the second floor.

"What therapy?" Mrs. Rhodes asked.

"Well you see, Mrs. Rhodes," Hannibal said, "Murdock was recently released from the V.A., his doctor finally deemed him sane enough to function out in society again."

"Oh!" she nodded slowly, indicating she understood so far.

"As part of his outgoing therapy however," Hannibal continued, "His psychiatrist, Dr. Richter, passed along the recommendation that he not sleep alone incase he suffers flashbacks, as he's sometimes wont to do. Oh," he put his hand up and added reassuringly, "He doesn't get violent, but he needs somebody to stay with him to remind him when he first wakes up of where he is."

Mrs. Rhodes looked confused, "I thought it was dangerous to try and wake up a Vet during flashbacks."

"It is," Hannibal answered, and told her, "But Murdock's flashbacks aren't derived from his tour in 'Nam, his flashbacks are caused by spending 10 years locked up in the psychiatric ward of the V.A. hospital, when it's most likely possible that he wasn't even insane to begin with."

Mrs. Rhodes' eyes grew to twice their size and her hand automatically reached over her heart when she heard that, "My Lord…how did…"

"Murdock was our pilot in 'Nam, he's the one who flew us when we hit the bank in Hanoi, but he avoided suspicion and being branded a traitor like the rest of us because he convinced everybody he was insane, therefore he couldn't be held accountable for what he'd done. That's why he was put in the V.A. when he was brought back to the country…we hadn't planned for him to stay in the hospital for so long, but for whatever reason, he refused to let the doctors see how sane he really was. In the meantime it kept him safe from the army and the government because as long as he was a patient there, nobody would think him competent, let alone our fourth member. Finally though I guess he just got tired of it because he finally let the doctors run their tests again and decide he could leave on his own."

Amy looked to Face for any hints of what was going on. She didn't find any but if the look on his face was anything to go on, then this was just another one of Hannibal's typical performances, his whole dialogue thought up at a moment's notice to convince somebody of something. Face actually looked amused by the way Hannibal was carrying on, but Amy could tell that there was also more than a hint of truth to what he was saying as well, but just where it ended and his own exaggeration and fabrication began, she didn't know.

"One thing that Murdock was never allowed in the hospital was to have a roommate," Hannibal said, "So on occasions when he _does_ suffer flashbacks, if there's somebody with him when he wakes up then he's fine because he _knows_ he's out, it's when he's alone that there's a problem."

Now the picture was clearer for Mrs. Rhodes, all the same she couldn't help asking, "But you think Jean is…"

"Well we've had to call on her for help a few times before when we weren't able to keep an eye on him," Hannibal explained, "She did very well, as I said before, Murdock isn't prone to violence during his episodes, you don't have anything to worry about."

Face felt somebody elbowing him in his ribs and he looked through the corner of his eye to see what it was Amy wanted, she leaned over towards him and murmured into his ear, "We're all going to hell for lying to this woman."

"You just figure that out?" Face nonchalantly replied, "By the time Hannibal gets done spinning this yarn I'm going to be surprised if lightning doesn't come and get us all."

* * *

"One thing about Hannibal," Jean said as she half closed the door to her old room, "He can come up with any story in a moment's notice. Just like he can play any part in a moment's notice."

"That's why he's the actor," Murdock said.

"He should've been a lawyer instead," Jean told him, "You spew out just as much bull but the pay's better." She snaked her hands under his jacket to pull it up from the waistband of his pants and told him, "Take that thing off."

Murdock laughed and squirmed as her knuckles brushed against his stomach through his thin T-shirt and he took a step back and pulled her hands off of him and told her, "Cut that out."

As he unzipped his jacket, Jean reached up and flicked his blue cap off his head and tossed it like a Frisbee and it landed on the dresser across the room.

"Hey Murdock," Jean said to him, "I'm really glad that you guys came up with this plan to come out here, it's really nice getting to see my mom again."

"Yeah well, in all actuality this trip was in everybody's best interest," Murdock said, "One good thing about it, it gets us 3000 miles away from Decker, of course there's a downside to it as well."

"What's that?" Jean asked.

"That it's _only_ 3000 miles away from Decker," Murdock answered with a goofy grin.

There was a very short gap between them, and Murdock closed it by leaning forward and kissing Jean, when he pulled away from her and rocked back on his heels and saw her, he could tell she was as exhausted as he was.

"Come on," he said as he placed his hands on her shoulders, "Let's go to bed."

Jean yawned and replied, "Fine with me, I'm exhausted after last night, first I'm told you've been blinded and I have to fly you guys, and then I find out it's not a chopper, it's a damn Gulfstream…I'm still going to strangle Hannibal for that one."

Murdock laughed and watched as she peeled the Velcro back on her shoes and tossed them across the room and collapsed on the bed. He sat down beside her and untied his Chuck Taylor sneakers and neatly laid them down by the side of the bed and promptly fell back beside her on the bed. He reached over and pulled her over towards him and smiled at her as he said, "Goodnight, Saint."

"Good_night_?" Jean repeated as she pointed to the clock.

Murdock shrugged and replied, "Goodnight, good morning, good hunting, good grief, good luck, good riddance, good something, just good."

"Just as long as you don't start singing again," Jean told him.

Murdock laughed and did just that, resuming the same song that he'd performed in the plane to put her to sleep the last time, "Goodnight, sweetheart, sleep will banish sorrow, goodnight, sweetheart, when we meet tomorrow…"

"Nice try, Murdock, but I know what you're doing, you're trying to put me to…." Jean slumped over with her eyes closed and started snoring lightly.

"I don't believe you," Murdock said to her.

Jean opened her eyes and said, "I don't blame you."

Though they'd had almost no contact with each other for the past couple of weeks, this had become their own private joke. After Hannibal and Face and B.A. finally left Jean and Murdock alone in her home, she'd started having short lived bouts of insomnia again and both of them wound up staying up until 4 or 5 in the morning only to have to go to work at the studio an hour later. And once again Murdock found himself trying every method he could think of to make Jean fall asleep short of drugging her, and once again nothing worked; one night when they were lying in bed together, both of them about crazy from lack of sleep, an idea hit Murdock. For all that Murdock knew about music, there was also a lot that he didn't know, he didn't know hymns and something else he didn't know was lullabies, but he remembered an old song he often heard as a kid, and it was the closest thing to one that he knew, so he decided to try it.

"Goodnight, sweetheart, all my prayers are for you, goodnight sweetheart, I'll be watching over you. Tears and parting may make us forlorn, but with the dawn, a new day is born. So I'll say goodnight sweetheart, sleep will banish sorrow, goodnight sweetheart, when we meet tomorrow. Dreams enfold you, in them, dear, I'll hold you, goodnight sweetheart, goodnight…"

He repeated the song a couple of times and noticed that Jean had actually fallen asleep in his arms, and that seemed to do the trick; the next night around 1 o' clock, she was able to fall asleep without trouble. Though she insisted that it had nothing to do with that song or his singing, sometimes at night he murmured the song in her ear as added insurance that she would stay asleep, and it seemed to work, and it became a running gag between them. He explained that on occasions when he got a song stuck in his head, Face would take the opportunity to ramble on and on with the song as a cue for Murdock to shut up, so as a joke, this became his 'shut up' song to her as well. But for that purpose, it only worked about half the time.

"Alright, goodnight, Murdock," Jean said as she leaned over and kissed him, missing his mouth entirely.

"Goodnight, Saint," he replied.

* * *

Meanwhile downstairs, Jean's mother was giving the rest of the Team a tour of the house and where they would be spending the night, which was scattered through the living room on the furniture and on the floor. Hannibal assured her that this was no problem whatsoever and everybody would be fine. Then she took them through the kitchen and showed the turkey that was thawing for tomorrow.

"When you said that you all were coming, I got the biggest one I could find, 27 pounds," she looked over to B.A. and commented, "I hope it's big enough."

B.A. only managed half a scowl at that remark, he couldn't stay mad at women and he couldn't resist laughing in spite of himself.

"I'm sure everything will be fine, Mrs. Rhodes," Hannibal assured her, "Incidentally though, what time do you plan to be serving dinner tomorrow?"

"Well in our family, we always have the big meal at noon and just have leftovers for dinner."

"I hate to break it to you," Face told her, "But there won't _be_ any leftovers this time."

That one B.A. wouldn't let slide and he shoved one large elbow into Face's side, knocking the wind out of him and making him a hunchback as he doubled over slightly.

"Come on, B.A.," Face wheezed, "Can't you take a joke?"

"When they funny, and you ain't, sucker," B.A. told him.

"_Children_," Hannibal said to them in a semi-threatening tone, getting both their attention and causing them to move away from one another, and look away in opposite directions, "Behave yourselves or I'm sending you both to your rooms."

"We don't have rooms here," Face reminded him.

"When has that ever stopped me?" Hannibal turned to Mrs. Rhodes and asked her, "You got a tool shed around back?"

"Alright, Hannibal, you win," Face said.

"Naturally," he grinned in response. Then he turned to Jean's mother and said to her, "Mrs. Rhodes, if there's anything you need help with today, please let us know, I know we're putting you out with a whole houseful of us, so we'll be only too happy to help you out in any way we can."

"That's very generous of you, Mr. Smith, but that won't be necessary," she said to him, then a thought occurred to her and she asked, "Have any of you eaten yet today?"

Amy and Face both shook their heads and said, "No."

"That won't be necessary," Hannibal told her.

"Nonsense, you went to all the trouble of bringing my daughter home for Thanksgiving, it's the least I can do," Mrs. Rhodes replied, "It'll be a relief to me, I still haven't gotten used to cooking for just two people anymore."

Hannibal's bottom teeth bit into the inside of his top lip at that comment, "Alright then, but don't put yourself out, we're not particular."

* * *

After breakfast, Hannibal had gone upstairs to check on Jean and Murdock, and found that her mother had already beaten him to it. Mrs. Rhodes stood outside the door to Jean's bedroom and looked inside as if she was seeing everything through a window. Hannibal quietly stepped beside her and also saw the pilot and the daughter on top of the bed, Murdock on his back with one knee in the air, and Jean curled on her side pressed into his side.

"They are cute, aren't they?" he noted quietly.

Mrs. Rhodes smiled and said, "Yes, I suppose they are."

They both stepped away from the door and down the hall to the master bedroom and Mrs. Rhodes said to Hannibal as she sat down on the trunk by her bed, "I know that Jean keeps busy with her work in movies."

"You have no idea," Hannibal said, "The days start around 5 o' clock and last until 7 at night, more or less depending on when they lose the light."

Mrs. Rhodes nodded glumly and said, "She tries to call every once in a while, but I know there's a lot going on in her life I don't know anything about."

"Well, if it's any consolation, we keep a pretty good eye on her when possible, so I know she's not having any problems," Hannibal told her, "She and I have been working together in a new military film, we don't have any scenes together but it gives me a perfect excuse to watch her like a hawk."

"And your friend?" she pointed back towards the bedroom, "Mr. Murdock?"

"He's found work in the same movie as a stunt pilot," Hannibal explained, "So we all keep in close touch."

"I see…Mr. Smith, do you happen to know if Jean is involved with anyone?"

"Oh…" he shook his head, "Not really, she mainly likes keeping to herself. There were a couple of guys she shared a stunt role with as the Kamikaze Racer, but it wasn't anything serious. Incidentally, has the advertisement for that movie reached this coast yet?"

"I don't think so," she answered as she shook her head.

"Oh, well, when it comes out you simply must see it, your daughter is terrific in it," he said, "Granted you'll never see her face, but being her mother I'm sure you'll be able to spot her against the others."

She laughed a little and said, "Yes, I suppose so." She looked up at him and said, "Mr. Smith, I can't ever thank you enough for bringing Jean back. I don't just mean now, but when you first found her…"

Hannibal knew that they were now broaching a very touchy subject and he was glad that they were alone for it. He tried to act casual and told her, "Just doing our job."

"It may have been routine for you, Mr. Smith, but it sure wasn't for us."

"I know," Hannibal said somberly. He scratched the back of his head and asked her, "Mrs. Rhodes, are you familiar with the term post traumatic stress?"

"Yes," she nodded, "My brother also served in Vietnam…but he doesn't come around much, I don't think Jean's even seen her uncle since she was a little girl."

Hannibal nodded in understanding, "When Jean still lived here, did she ever flashback to what happened?"

Mrs. Rhodes shook her head and said, "If she did, we never knew it," her eyes widened and she asked him, "Is it possible we missed something?"

"No, no," Hannibal tried to calm her down and explained, "I'm just trying to prepare you…you know, Jean does very well in this new movie, but the subject matter, that, I wasn't too sure about her doing it. It might take her back to the Brutus episode and if that happens, she could, she might get the whole house up screaming in the night, she might do any one of a dozen things if it happens."

"If it does," she replied, "Whatever happens, we will deal with it, she is still our daughter."

"I know, I'm just trying to get you ready incase the ceiling falls on this one," Hannibal said as he sat down beside her, "Jean's a very nice girl, but she's very unfortunate to have to had gone through what she did. I wouldn't wish what happened to her on anybody."

"I can think of a few," Mrs. Rhodes said as she shifted her gaze towards the floor, "Like those horrible men that did it to her in the first place."

Hannibal nodded in agreement, "I know, but they already died for their parts in it, and depending on your outlook on life after death, their problems are either long over, or just beginning. Personally, I'll take just beginning."

She nodded. She looked at him and said, "Tell me something, Mr. Smith, does your friend Murdock like my daughter?"

"Very much, ma'am," Hannibal answered, "They get along very well. It's funny when you consider he was locked up in a psychiatric ward for 10 years and your daughter can understand him and his psychoses better than anyone else can."

Mrs. Rhodes laughed when he mentioned that and asked him, "Like the dog?"

"Yes, exactly like that," he said.

"Well, I'm glad for that," she said, "I'm glad she has _one_ friend at least, I don't mind telling you she is not an easy person to like. She seems to pride herself on being a detestable person for some reason."

"Believe me, I know," Hannibal replied, "But it all worked out, _we_ aren't the easiest people in the world to get along with either, it helps to keep out a lot of the unworthy snakes that like to slither in unnoticed. It's a form of self preservation, unfortunately in this world it's needed quite often."

"I suppose that's why I wasn't _as_ worried when she moved out as I thought I would be. Jean's always known how to look after herself, I'm afraid if it were me, I wouldn't be as lucky."

"No," Hannibal shook his head in agreement, "I don't think you could be mean if your life depended on it. But she _knows_ how to scare off unwanted attention."

She smiled at him and said, "I have to rely on my husband for that…that's one place I'm glad Jean _didn't_ take after me."

Hannibal had a good idea he knew what she was getting at and he gave voice to it, "You don't think that Jean's going to get married."

"No time soon anyway," Mrs. Rhodes answered, "Oh I know in this day and age a woman doesn't _have_ to marry…but I would like to know that she's got _somebody_ with her when she's 3000 miles away from her family. I'd just like to know that she's not alone all the time."

Hannibal tilted his head to the side as he pondered what he was about to say, and walked right into it, "Perhaps then, Mrs. Rhodes, you will be able to withstand the news I'm about to give you."

She looked at him and asked, "What, what is it, what?"

"Now that Murdock's been released from the hospital, he doesn't have any place to stay, he's been switching with us every couple of weeks but our own residences are far from permanent establishments, so I've asked Jean if she would consider letting Murdock stay in one of the spare rooms at her house since she doesn't draw any suspicion in connection to us…she said yes he could. It's hardly the married life, but she's got _somebody_ with her anyway."

Mrs. Rhodes took a minute to absorb this new fact and when it finally hit her, she smiled, "Well it's a start anyway I suppose."

"Yes," Hannibal said, smiling in spite of his sudden feeling like a heel, or perhaps it only heightened the humor he saw in this situation as he added, "It's a _start_."


	3. Chapter 3

"I don't know how people can stand living out here," Face said as he and B.A. sat on the couch in the living room watching a football game, and Amy sat on the couch's arm on the far end from them scribbling something down in a notebook, "Sure, there's no smog, and it must be interesting to actually have four seasons instead of just rainy and hot, but it's _freezing_ out here, what do people do all day besides stay indoors standing over a heating vent?"

"Typical Face," Amy said with a giggle, "You couldn't go one day without complaining about something."

"That's not true," he replied.

"Yes it is," B.A. told him in that usual 'shut up' tone they were all accustomed to hearing from him.

Face uncrossed his legs and scooched over to the other side of the couch so he was closer to Amy, he tried looking over her shoulder to see what she was writing but she pulled up the corner of the notebook to shield it from his view.

"Writing in your diary?" he inquired.

Amy looked at him and hit him over the head with the notebook playfully, "I'm working on a story for the Courier Express."

"What, already? Out here?" Face snatched the notebook away from her and said, "Let me see that." He found the page she had been writing on and read the rough draft title, "How much money will it save the government to just pardon the A-Team?" He looked up at her and said, "You're losing your touch, Amy."

"Give me that," Amy said as she stole the book back from him, "Haven't you ever thought about it, Face?"

"Not really, what is there to think about?" he replied.

"How many army vehicles did Lynch smash up trying to catch you guys?" Amy asked him.

"Oh who remembers?" Face asked, "What do you think, B.A.? Five-six dozen?"

"Figure in other people's cars that also got demolished, try five-six hundred," B.A. answered.

"And what about the army helicopters?" Amy asked.

"What about them?" Face asked, "Sure we borrowed them from time to time, but you can't put the charge of fuel on that bill."

"Hasn't the Army used their choppers to try and flush you guys out?" Amy asked, "And in the process they've been stolen, shot up, crashed, and how much do those cost to repair or replace?"

"Not enough," B.A. answered, "They still get 'em fixed and follow us again in them."

"It's something to think about anyway," Amy told Face, "I mean the military gets its money from the taxpayers, does the public _really_ want to know their hard earned money is going to support these wild goose chases, that _always_ turn up empty handed and with the MPs having egg on their faces?"

"Hmmm," Face thought about it, "It's a good point, but do you think it'll work?"

"Well it'll raise public awareness on the matter anyway," Amy replied, "It's a start."

"I suppose so, but don't go getting any ideas, Amy, you're no Upton Sinclair and you know it," he told her.

Amy hit him over the head with her book again.

"And _stop_ that!" he told her, "You're going to mess up my hair!"

Amy about fell off the arm laughing, "Typical Face."

"Always," B.A. commented from the other end of the couch.

Hannibal stepped around the corner into the dining room and looked into the living room and walked in and observed, "Murdock _must_ be crazy, he'd have to be to be able to sleep through this."

"Everything okay, Hannibal?" Amy asked.

"Yeah, fine…Murdock and Jean are asleep, and Jean's mother has _no_ idea that her daughter has been married and divorced already. I just dropped the bombshell on her about Murdock moving in with her."

"How'd she take that?" Amy inquired.

"Surprisingly well," Hannibal answered, "Better than I thought she would."

"Well she knows Jean's safe with him," Amy said, "You can tell that just by looking at Murdock."

"Oh come on, Amy," Face said to her, "Do you mean to tell me when you first met Murdock at the V.A. and he started shaving spots on his head that you weren't the least bit anxious to get out of there?"

"I thought he was crazy," Amy told him, "Not that he was dangerous, there _is_ a difference."

"Not always," Face replied, "Remember Martin James?"

"Who could forget?" she asked him.

"Martin James," Hannibal corrected his lieutenant and got all three people's attention, "Was a narcissistic egomaniac, he was psychotic, not crazy."

"There's a difference now?" Face asked.

"Always," Hannibal answered.

"Come on, Face," Amy said, "You're the money man here, how much would you estimate that the army has wasted in resources chasing after you guys for ten years?"

"I don't know," he replied, "What's the latest number on the National Debt?"

* * *

Murdock woke up tangled up in an old crocheted afghan, and he was alone. Once he was able to get unraveled from the confines of his purple yarn cocoon, he noticed that the other side of the bed was empty and cold. He sat up and found the clock that said it was going on 11 in the morning, and he guessed that meant it was still Wednesday and that he hadn't been asleep for 27 hours. Unless B.A. was playing a trick on him to get back for all the times they knocked him out and wound his watch forward under the guise of driving for a day and a half. And yet, that didn't seem B.A.'s style, knocking somebody's teeth out was.

As Murdock kicked off the bottom of the afghan from his feet and started to get up, he wondered what he'd had in his mouth when he was asleep because he had a taste in his mouth like he'd been chewing on an old shoe. First he checked the pillows to make sure he hadn't brought the marshmallow dream joke to life, then he looked at the side by the bed and saw his shoes still there, and intact; he got up and went over to his jacket and dug through the pockets looking for a piece of gum, but there was none. He also rifled through the pockets in Jean's jacket, but there wasn't anything there either. He went into the bathroom and twisted the lid off a bottle of blue mint mouthwash figuring a good gargle would take the funky taste out of his mouth. He swallowed half of it and his stomach burnt, but once he got his mouth rinsed out, the mouthwash was still the only thing he could taste, well, it was an improvement anyway.

Returning to Jean's bedroom, Murdock went to his bag and unpacked a change of clothes; he was sure that Thanksgiving here wasn't going to be too formal but all the same he thought it'd be a nice change of pace to dress up for once, he took out a tan dress shirt, a pair of blue jeans, white Velcro sneakers, and one slightly newer blue and white baseball cap. He wouldn't be wearing any of it until tomorrow but he decided to put them out so he'd remember, and then he decided it would be a good idea to get a bath and freshen up.

One thing Murdock easily noticed about the house, it was drafty, he didn't know if they just didn't have the heat on yet or what, but he filled the tub with hot water and then filled it to the top with half a bottle of bubble bath; he liked to tease Face about living in it, especially in front of whoever Face's current girlfriend was, but the lieutenant wasn't the only one who enjoyed soaking in a tub full of suds. He let out one long hiss of relief as he sank into the hot water and rested his head against the back of the fiberglass tub. He picked up the new bar of soap in the dish and sang something only half intelligible as he got himself lathered up and then held his nose and submerged under the surface. When he rose back up he smoothed back his hair and resumed leaning against the back of the tub and reveling in the hot water. A few minutes later, he heard somebody knocking on the bathroom door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"It's me," he heard Jean's voice, "Can I come in?"

Murdock sat up and made sure the surface of the water was still heavily covered with bubbles and said, "Yeah, come in."

Jean came in, her hair slightly different and her clothes changed, before she had a chance to say anything, Murdock said, "It sure is quiet in this house, where _is_ everybody?"

"My mom went down to the store to get a few more things for tomorrow, and for some reason, Hannibal talked her in to taking Face with her," Jean told him.

"No surprise," Murdock said, "With B.A. here she'll need a couple more turkeys just to make sure we all get some."

"And also for some reason, Hannibal and B.A. are out in the back yard trying to figure out _why_ since the gas company put in a new meter, my parents are getting billed for three times as much usage for the same amount. You think they'll get anywhere with that one?"

"If anybody can, the Colonel and the angry mudsucker can, he is our own personal master tinkerer," Murdock answered, "You see? I told you everything was going to be fine when we got here."

"Yeah and so far it is," she admitted, "So I guess I got all excited for nothing."

"Well it's understandable," he told her, "It's your first time back home. Now the next time you come home, there won't be any problems."

"Yeah, next time," Jean repeated as she sat down on the edge of the tub, "Though tell you the truth, I'm looking forward to getting tomorrow over with and then going back home to L.A."

"How come?" Murdock asked.

She smiled mischievously at him and said, "Well you said when we go back, that you'd be coming back with me."

Murdock felt his eyebrows climb halfway up his forehead and a smirk that spread out from ear to ear. He was having a good time here but he knew they'd have a lot more fun once they got back to California and everything resumed in business as usual. He already wore three layers of clothes to go outside, if the temperature got any lower here he'd need five or seven, and he was in no mood to be impersonating an Eskimo…now, a polar bear perhaps…

Though he had his mouth closed, Jean noticed the unusual way he moved it around, like a cow chewing on cud and she asked him, "Are you alright?"

"Hmm?" he turned to her, "Oh yeah, I'm fine…hey Saint, do you happen to have any gum?"

"Nope," she shook her head.

"How about a mint?"

"Sorry," she shrugged, "How come?"

That taste was back in his mouth again, and he knew what it was. "Oh nothing," he said as he leaned back, "Just the ol' taste buds going through a little sugar withdrawal. I usually keep a pack of gum on hand but I ran out a few days ago and we didn't have time to stop so I could pick up another."

"Gum makes your teeth fall out," Jean said in a tone like she was reciting it.

"Have you _ever_ known anybody whose teeth fell out from chewing gum?" he asked her.

"No," she answered, "But it'd be a shame if they did, you've got nice ones."

Murdock couldn't help grinning when she said that.

"Tell you what," Jean said, "You get your clothes on, we'll go down to the store and you can pick some up, I like being home but I've got to get out of this house for a while myself."

"Alright," Murdock reached behind him to get a towel off the rack, but he stopped and in a coy tone he told her, "Turn around."

Jean laughed and said, "Come on, Murdock, we're all adults here."

"I know that," he said, not budging either from where he sat, or on his current disposition, "Turn around," he repeated.

Jean laughed again and did as he said.

"Now close your eyes," he told her.

"Alright."

"And put your fingers in your ears," he added.

Jean turned and glanced at him curiously and he said, "That always happened with Dr. Richter too."

Jean turned back around and Murdock got up and got wrapped up in a large white towel and pulled the drain plug out and stepped over the side of the tub. Jean followed him out of the bathroom and back to the bedroom, he stopped at the dresser to pick up his clothes and Jean stood behind him and gazed at his reflection and she told him, "You know something, Murdock? You are _so_ cute when you first get out of the tub."

Murdock laughed dismissively at her comment and then let out a surprised yelp when she grabbed him. She had one arm around his waist and ran her other hand up his back and through his hair, "You're especially cute when your hair's like this, nice and soft and sticking up, you don't look good with it slicked back and down, then you _really_ look like you're crazy."

Murdock turned to the side by her and sniffed, well, it didn't appear that she'd been drinking, but he wouldn't rule that out yet. Either that or when Jean was asleep, the pod people took over and replaced her with a zany nymphomaniac.

Jean's hand moved from his waist up and down his arm and added, "But boy, you sure are scrawny."

Nope, that was Jean alright, the real Jean, not a pod imposter.

"I am _not_ scrawny," he told her.

"Murdock, you are the human zipper, you turn to the side and I'll lose you…my mother's going to have a lot of fun tomorrow trying to fatten you up. She loves a challenge, and you sure as hell look like one."

"Oh yeah?" Murdock asked as he grabbed his clothes and walked away from her, and over to the closet where he pulled the door in front of him like a changing screen and asked, "Why doesn't she try fattening _you_ up instead?"

"She tried, the whole year I stayed here after you guys went back to California," Jean told him, "Noting worked."

"Well she has to have noticed you put it on now," Murdock said from behind the door as he got dressed.

"Yes, she also commented on my hair being shorter…I told her it's actually gotten longer," Jean replied, "She never saw that haircut _you_ gave me."

Murdock was silent at that except for a small giggle behind the closet door.

"Now tell me something, Saint," Murdock said as he half emerged from behind the door dressed in his tan pants and a T-shirt with panda bears on it, trying to get his plaid shirt buttoned up, "You said your parents would never leave New York."

"That's right."

He looked up at her to meet her eyes and he asked, "Well you think they would feel inclined to move out to California if we got them a place near us?"

"You serious?" Jean asked.

"Well yeah," he grunted as he got one particularly stubborn button, "I mean if we're going to get married again someday, I don't want my wife living 3,000 miles away from her parents, can you imagine the commute it would be to see their grandchildren?" He saw the look on her face and continued, "I mean obviously it's not something to be decided right away, but what do you think?"

"I don't know," Jean said, "It'd be nice to live closer to my mother but I'll have to see what she thinks about it, maybe when we get back to L.A. I'll ask her about it."

"I think Face could stand to benefit from it too," Murdock told her.

"How?" she asked.

"Well he never had a mother, and you were an only child so your mother never had a son either, I think Hannibal's getting her to play the part of a surrogate mother to him for the time we're here, something he never had, he's probably enjoying the attention, and truth be told she's probably enjoying having somebody else around here to baby, even if it _is_ a 35 year old man."

Jean looked mildly surprised by this idea and she told Murdock, "I never thought about that, and that might come in handy for us, if she's got her hands full coddling Face for the first time in his life, then she won't have as much time to keep an eye on me." With a little devilish smirk, she took one large step towards him, wrapped her arms around him tightly and kissed him. Murdock in return grabbed her by the front of her jacket and shoved his free hand into her pockets, trying to find something.

"What is it?" Jean asked.

"Just checking, have you been taking my medications?" Murdock asked her.

"Murdock you don't _have_ any medications," she told him.

"Yes I do," he told her, "You know I always bring those pill bottles when I travel."

"Murdock," Jean replied, "I've seen those bottles, you carry around vitamin C and jujubes in them."

"Of course!" Murdock said as if he had stumbled on the secret of the universe, "I'm out of my medication, that's why my tongue feels like it needs to be shaved," he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her along towards the door, "Come on!"

Jean followed behind him laughing the entire way down the stairs.

* * *

They took the car and Jean drove them out to the grocery store but on the way, Murdock had seen something else that screamed for a detour. Jean went down the street he said and hit the brakes when he did, and looked to see what it was that had grabbed his attention, and she quickly found out that the only thing worse than a kid in a candy store was a Murdock in a candy store.

To anybody who lived in California, there wasn't anything in the rest of the country that was worth having that you couldn't get without having to cross state lines for. Among everything else, one thing California had was candy stores, but when they stepped into the small shop Murdock spotted from the corner, he told Jean that the sweet shops in L.A. had _nothing_ on this place, and like an excited little kid he ran through all the aisles looking at all the candy on the shelves, reaching into bins and slipping his hands under lids on big jars to sneak out spice drops and jelly beans and the occasional unwrapped caramels and peppermints. Jean picked up a brown paper bag next to the bins and handed it to him and told him, "Here, either put the candy in it or stick your head in so you don't hyperventilate. I'm guessing this is a nice step up from the chewing gum."

"Oh it all looks so pretty," Murdock said as he ogled over the jars full of rainbow hard candies and cherry twist sticks, "How to pick?"

"Just get some of everything," Jean told him as she got another bag, "We can afford it." Something on a shelf of bagged candy caught her eye and she said, "Hey Murdock."

He turned to see what it was and she held up a bag of Smarties, "Wouldn't these look nice in a pill bottle?"

"Yeah, get those!" he said.

Jean looked at the rest of the candies on the shelf and wrinkled her brow and her nose, "What, no Sweetarts? I love those, always ate them _with_ the Smarties. Oh well…" She turned and saw Murdock grabbing handfuls of licorice dogs and circus peanuts and ribbon candy, and she did a double take, "Ribbon candy? I thought they only sold that at Christmas."

Murdock pointed to a shelf full of it and other Christmas candies, "They start advertising earlier and earlier."

"Incidentally, Murdock," Jean said as she grabbed the first bag he'd loaded to the brim with peppermint sticks, lollypops and licorice, "Didn't you get any of this stuff in the V.A.?"

"Not much," he answered, "Hard candies, I guess they thought we'd choke on them seeing as how we're crazy and all, just about everything that _did_ come out of the vending machines was gum."

"What, no chocolate bars?"

"Somebody always beat me to them," he answered, "Wouldn't you know, it was always the guys that couldn't even eat candy, so if they couldn't have it, the rest of us couldn't either."

"You know that reminds me," Jean said as she walked off, "We always have a big bowl of butter mints for Thanksgiving, I'll see if they have any of those around here."

Murdock paid her little mind and instead pounced on an invisible opponent, exclaiming, "Hey you, gimme all them jelly beans!"

Jean came back a minute later and saw Murdock had stuffed four large bags full of candy and she commented to herself, "Trina had her money, Murdock's got his candy, and I wouldn't dream of taking either from them."

By the time they got out of the store, Jean estimated that Murdock had bagged up about 15 pounds of candy, which he immediately started eating on the way home, and she started to wonder if it would even last until tomorrow.

"Keep it up, Murdock," she told him, "And you're going to make yourself sick."

He said something in response but it couldn't be deciphered over a mouthful of gummy bears

"Suit yourself," Jean said, "But just remember you're sleeping downstairs on the floor tonight, if you get sick then B.A.'s going to be your nursemaid."

"Oh he'd do it," Murdock told her, "I know he would, I know he worries about me."

Jean snorted at that.

"So are you looking forward to rooming with Amy tonight?" Murdock asked her.

"I would rather sleep with you," Jean told him.

"Oh I know you would, just remember, when we get back to L.A., I won't have to climb over Face and the Colonel and a flight of stairs to do it," he reminded her.

Jean smiled and shook her head, "Face is right, this is a miserable place to spend the winters, there's nothing to do around here and you can't go out without bundling up like a package marked fra-gi-lee."

"Whereas I hear come Saturday," Murdock told her, "Los Angeles is expecting a high of 86 and plenty of sun."

"Plenty to do in that weather," Jean said.

Murdock munched on a couple of black licorice Scotties and replied, "Until then…" He reached over, grabbed Jean's free hand and kissed it.

"Until then what?" Jean asked.

"Until then, we're going to have ourselves a nice quiet holiday here in New York, where we're 3000 miles away from Decker and all his buggy friends. Nothing is going to happen while we're here."

A thought occurred to Jean and she asked Murdock, "Do you remember where they said Lynch was transferred to when Decker replaced him?"

Murdock straightened in his seat and got a slightly worried look on his face.

"Well," he said to her, "Even if he _would_ happen to be somewhere in the surrounding area, what're the odds he's going to find us?"

"Don't ask me for the odds," she replied, "Every time I gamble, I lose."

Murdock chuckled under his breath and when they stopped for a red light, he reached over and grabbed her and said in a suave tone, "It is my belief, that as a baby bird must leave the nest and risk everything to discover it can fly, such as lady luck must be brought out of her shell to win the game."

"Translation?" Jean asked.

"Translation," he said, "Next time I'm in Vegas hitting the slots I'm going to have you at my side being my good luck charm."

"When were you in Vegas?" she asked.

"That's a long story," he said as he noticed the light change, "I'll tell it to you later."

"Deal," Jean said as she stepped on the gas, "You know, Murdock, I just had a thought. If this is going to be Face's first Thanksgiving, then this is also going to be his first time helping stuff a turkey, right?"

Murdock got a big grin on his face at the mention of that and said, "Now there's going to be a sight to see, I don't want to miss that!"

"Yeah, let's see if we can get home before he faints," Jean replied.


	4. Chapter 4

Face became conscious to the fact that he was lying down somewhere and had been asleep. As he moved on his back and started to open his eyes, he heard somebody giggling. He opened his eyes and saw Amy standing over him.

"Hello, sleeping beauty," she said.

Face felt like he'd been asleep for hours, he started to sit up but felt something on him. He looked down and saw he was lying on the couch in the living room and was covered by a heavy blanket, he looked back up at Amy and asked her, "What happened?"

"You fell asleep when Mrs. Rhodes was talking about the sleeping arrangements for tonight, she told everyone not to bother you," Amy told him.

"Ah, but you decided to anyway," Face replied as he adjusted the blanket over him, "Nice. Where _is_ everybody?"

"Pests never take a holiday, Hannibal's been outside for the last 15 minutes trying to drive off the Jehovah Witnesses, I think he's about to send them running for the hills," Amy told him as she sat down in the chair by the couch.

Face laughed, "Typical Hannibal, what about B.A.?"

"The heat went out so he's downstairs in the basement trying to fix the heater."

"I thought houses in New York didn't have basements," Face murmured as he curled up under the blanket and tried to go back to sleep.

"Well this one does," she told him, "And Murdock and Jean got back about half an hour ago."

"Hmmmm," Face murmured, his eyes already closed again.

Amy reached over and pinched him and with a short yelp he was awake again and starting to sit up.

"Something else you wanted?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said as she moved over towards him, "I want to know why you guys never told me about these people before."

"Come on, Amy," Face tiredly replied as he rubbed his eyes.

"Face, it was over a year ago, why didn't you tell me about this case?"

"There wasn't anything to tell," Face said, "It was just business as usual."

"Really?" Amy asked him, "How many women that you set out to rescue wind up shot and almost killed while in your protection?"

He opened both his eyes and scowled at her, "Alright, so it wasn't _quite_ business as usual, but when the mission was done, Jean came home here and we went back home to L.A., and that was the end of it."

"Until now," Amy said.

"No, until six months ago about," Face corrected her, "And three months ago is when we found out Jean had moved out there. Don't look at me like that, I told you about it, right before you left for Jakarta."

"I remember," she told him, "First you had me go to the studio to find her, from there to the hospital, and hit a dead end because nobody knew her. And then you had me checking obituaries in the paper, you never said anything about her."

"I did too."

"You said she was a friend you were helping, you didn't say she almost died," Amy said.

Face shrugged, "What can I say? That was a horrible time and we were _all_ trying to forget about it. Believe me, Amy, you didn't miss out on anything that time, you don't want to know what it's like being in a helicopter with somebody bleeding to death all over you. I thought we'd seen all of that in Vietnam that we were ever going to."

* * *

"This new movie is barely finished filming and already I'm getting typecasted," Jean told Murdock, Amy, Face and her mother as they worked in the kitchen that afternoon.

Her mother had wanted to get the pies baked before they put the turkey in that night, and so for the first time in his life Templeton Peck was getting a crash course at what went into homemade apple pies, which included stirring a large bowl full of sliced apples, sugar and cinnamon with his bare hands, and it would've been worth any admission charged to see the look on his face as he did so.

"I already got a call for when I get back to Hollywood," Jean continued, "I'm auditioning for a character that the _only_ thing I know about is they're going to bring me in off a chopper in a body bag, supposed to be dead, but when they open it up for the autopsy I jump up gasping for air. Unfortunately I know the director, this is the guy that had me tied to the helicopter skids a few pictures ago."

"That one again?" Murdock asked in a whining tone.

"Yeah, Mr. Realism," Jean said, "And for this role, he wants to have the camera rolling on the bag at all times during the opening flight scene, meaning I would have to be barely breathing at all, and probably only twice each minute."

"Well it sounds dangerous to me," Mrs. Rhodes said, "Is it worth it?"

"It's a job just like any other job, somebody's got to do them," Jean said, "Stunts are what I do, I do the dangerous stuff nobody else wants to, and if you can be a leading star who does that too, then that's a bonus, look at Buster Keaton, the man made his whole career on doing his own stunts."

"I don't know though, another army manufactured psycho?" Face asked, "Those movies are getting to be a dime a dozen, like the old westerns."

"Well come on, Face," Jean said, "It walks the perfect line between reality and mad science fantasy, people love it, they eat it up with a spoon after Vietnam. But I doubt I'll get the part, they're open to suggestions, they're taking both men and women to determine at a later time what sex the role's ultimately going to be. I told Hannibal he ought to try it."

"He can't do that, you know that," Face told her, "He can't show his face on film."

"Well what does he always carry around that makeup kit for with grease paint and extra noses and phony wrinkles? Besides, if nothing else, maybe _he_ could do the stint in the rubber bag, I get the idea he's had more experience in playing a corpse."

"In coffins," Face replied, "Never in body bags."

"Never?" Jean asked, "Not even back in Vietnam?"

"Especially not in Vietnam, bad omen," Face answered.

"Hey," Jean said, "You know what they ought to do? They ought to do a movie about that whole body bag trafficking that went on during the war when they smuggled drugs back into America in the corpse's bags, as much as people eat up conspiracies and all of that stuff, it would be an instant hit."

"Or instant flop," Murdock replied as he took a gumball out of a small bag in his pocket and started chewing on it, "Some of which do tend to get reincarnated as cult classics many years later, either way it would be worth mentioning when you get back."

"Speaking of which though, where _is_ Hannibal?" Jean asked, "I haven't seen him for half an hour now."

"He _was_ out in the backyard earlier," Amy said as she entered the kitchen, "But I don't know where he is now."

Speak of the devil and up he popped. Hannibal opened the back door and stepped into the kitchen and asked, "Alright, who's got the keys to the rental car?"

"B.A.," Amy answered as she helped Mrs. Rhodes fit another freshly rolled pie crust into a pan, "He went to find a phone booth to try calling his mother from so it couldn't be traced back to the house."

"Why?" Face asked.

"I need to pick up a new box of cigars when he gets back, I'm out," Hannibal said, sounding like a diehard coffee drinker who caught somebody slipping him decaf.

Murdock reached into his bag of candy and said, "Here Colonel, try one of mine," and slipped Hannibal a green bubble gum cigar.

Hannibal did a double take at the thing in his hand, and chuckled as he bit down on the end of it and said, "The Surgeon General would love me for this."

He left the kitchen, and Jean leaned over towards Murdock and asked him, "Is Hannibal alright?"

"Why do you ask?" he wanted to know.

"He seems to be keeping his distance from everybody today," Jean told him, "Any particular reason why or is it just us he can't stand being around?"

Murdock shrugged, "Maybe he's just tired after the all night flight, while the rest of you guys were sawing logs he had to be on mudsucker patrol and knock B.A. out every time he started to come around."

"I don't know," Jean replied, and she sounded the part of not being convinced.

"By the way, Mrs. Rhodes," Face spoke up as he wiped his hands on a dish rag, "Exactly _when_ is your husband expected home?"

Mrs. Rhodes glanced at her wristwatch and said, "Oh…within the hour I'd guess."

"You know what we ought to do," Murdock said, "We ought to hide and jump out when he comes in and surprise him."

"Murdock," Jean told him, "I think my father's had enough surprises for one lifetime."

"Besides, the six of us being here when he walks in the door ought to be surprise enough," Face reminded him, "Don't you think?"

* * *

As it turned out, their very presence _was_ surprise enough for Mr. Rhodes when he got home that evening. First he was overjoyed to see Jean again, and then, he was nothing short of confused when he saw the A-Team standing in his living room. Of course he had been told that they would be bringing Jean out, but for one thing he thought that was going to be tomorrow, and secondly he didn't anticipate their staying, rather he thought they were dropping her off en route to someplace else. But there didn't appear to be any problems, and his wife explained to him that they'd already gotten everybody put up for the night, or rather they would after dinner and after they got the bird in the oven. When she mentioned that, Murdock just grinned and grinned as he looked towards Face, and the lieutenant couldn't figure out why.

That night as everybody was getting dished up for dinner and seated at the long table in the dining room, Face, Murdock and Jean were already seated and waiting on everybody else to join them, and while they waited, Jean leaned over and asked Face, "Do you remember what happened to Lynch when he transferred out and Decker replaced him?"

"I think he's working in Washington these days," Face said uncertainly, "Or maybe it was Maine…I don't know, one of those places…" he looked to her and asked, "Why?"

"What do you think the odds are that he could be around here somewhere?" Jean asked.

"What'd you have to bring that up for?" Face asked, "You'll jinx us all."

"Maybe so, but what do you think?" she asked him.

"Even if Lynch _was_ in the area," Face said, "I doubt he could _ever_ find out where we were."

"Even if he _did_," Murdock added, "We can pop that zit easily."

"Oh no doubt," Jean said, and reached over to poke Murdock in the arm repeatedly until he looked at her, "Don't forget, Lynch doesn't know me _near_ as well as Decker does."

Face laughed and about swallowed his napkin and replied, "Jean, I doubt _anybody_ knows you near as well as Decker does by this point."

Murdock reached over and jabbed Face with his elbow to shut up when he saw the others coming out of the kitchen. But Face just lowered his voice and commented to Jean, "Don't go underestimating Lynch, he may be an idiot but he has his moments, and he _does_ have 15 years' experience with _us_."

"So?" Jean asked.

"So," Face replied, "After having Hannibal fake a heart attack and pretend to die on him, I doubt anything you could come up with would surprise him."

"When did that happen?" Jean asked.

"That was back in 1973, see Lynch's daughter tracked Face back to the orphanage and…" Murdock started to explain, then promptly shut up when the other people came into earshot.

Hannibal cleared his throat as he sat down across from them and said, "What is it, Murdock?"

"Nothing, Colonel," Murdock said and lowered his head to stare at the food on his plate.

"We were just talking about your old friend and mine, Colonel Lynch," Jean said. She turned to look across the table at her parents and explained, "We had a run in with him a year ago. Not a _bad_ guy exactly, but not too bright."

Hannibal chuckled and replied, "You don't know the half of it. Incidentally, did I ever tell you how we got our van?"

"No," Jean said.

"Well to make a long story short," Face interrupted, "It was on Lynch's American Express card, that was our compensation for him denying us a pardon."

Jean choked on her glass of wine and half of it came back out through her nose when he said that. "Now how did you manage to swing that one?" she asked.

"That's a long story," Face said, "And one for another time."

"Aren't they all?" Amy asked.

Hannibal kept quiet during most of the meal, and he watched, he watched Jean and observed the way she acted. Things had changed _very_ much since the last time she was home. She spoke with her parents during dinner, she reminisced with them about events past, but it was as if she was making small talk to buy time, waiting to get away. She acted as if this wasn't her home anymore, instead it was like a waiting post, just biding her time until her _real_ family came and she could leave with them. Of course part of that was just the rough time adapting to the fact that so much could not be said openly in front of these people who she had known her whole life; they all knew something about what that was like, coming back from war nobody really wanted to know all the gory details. Granted, that wasn't the case here, but it was still a lot that they were better off not knowing.

Jean had been right, her folks were nice people, but not _too_ bright; she had been right when she said they weren't the type to ask too many questions and start trouble. If anything these people went out of their way to avoid it; so just _how_ they got this child, he would like to know. Then again, he looked around at the other people sitting at the table and wondered if the same question could be applied to their own parents.

* * *

After dinner was over and the dishes were done, Face found himself drafted in helping Jean, her mother, Amy and Murdock in the kitchen with the tasks of cooking enough stuffing for eight people and then jamming half of it into a 27 pound turkey. He watched and about passed out when he saw Mrs. Rhodes pull the neck and heart out of the opposite openings in the bird.

"Now what I've never gotten," Murdock said, "Is they stick the heart in the top, and then stick the neck down in the bird's butt, why?"

"I think it's one of those mysteries of the universe," Amy replied, humoring him.

"Sure," Jean added, "Like how did the Egyptians build the Pyramids, who was Jack the Ripper, and who gets to rearrange the turkey innards when they package up the butterballs? Hey Murdock, why don't you get the turkey buttered up?"

"No problem," Murdock placed one hand on the turkey's rotund abdomen and looked down at it and said in a suave tone, "Hey birdie, open your giblet and say 'ahhhhh!'"

"No, Murdock," Jean shook her head, "Butter the skin."

He shrugged and said, "I don't see why, but okay," and he picked up a stick of butter from the table, peeled back the wrapper and proceeded to butter the back of his hands.

"Not you ya crazy fool," B.A. told him and pointed at the turkey on the table, "The bird!"

"Oh!" Murdock said, as if the idea just occurred to him, "Right…"

Face had the misfortune of helping when it came time to hold the turkey's legs as wide apart as possible without ripping them off to clear the way for the stuffing to be crammed into the cavity.

"I have a newfound respect for all mothers in the world after this," he dryly commented to Amy once the turkey was stuffed clear full and its legs were hooked together in the plastic holder.

"Good," she replied.

"Now if only you was a seahorse," Jean added.

Face turned to her and asked, "How come?"

"Because it's the men seahorses that get pregnant," Jean said.

Murdock whistled and said mockingly, "I have a newfound respect for the seahorses in the world."

"Oh shut up, Murdock," Face told him.

Jean's mother ignored them and looked over everything and said, "I think we've got everything we'll need for tomorrow, I just hope it's enough."

"Well it's a 27 pound turkey and probably 35 pounds of stuffing, that ought to feed the angry mudsucker for lunch," Murdock said.

B.A. turned and growled at him, and Murdock subtly took one large step away from him and hid behind Jean again.

"We already got the pies ready for tomorrow, so there won't be much to do in the morning," Mrs. Rhodes said, "We put the turkey in now, turn the oven on at midnight and it'll be ready around the time we get up tomorrow, then we just keep it on low until noon."

"Assuming B.A. doesn't get hungry in the night and eats the whole thing in his sleep," Murdock said.

"Murdock, I'm warning you," B.A. told him, "You make one more crack about me and I'm gonna crack your skull down the middle."

Murdock placed both hands on the back of his head and crouched down behind Jean. Mrs. Rhodes laughed and commented, "You two must be awfully close, you're just like brothers."

B.A.'s eyes bugged out to twice their size and Murdock rose up to his full height and laughed, pointing at B.A. in an 'I told you so' manner.

* * *

As far as Murdock knew, Jean's parents had gone to bed around 11 o' clock, it was now 11:45 and he was hoping he wasn't waking anybody up. After Jean and Amy had gone upstairs to turn in, he remembered he left his pajamas in his bag up in their room so he crept up the stairs and lightly knocked on the door to see if anybody answered. The door opened so fast that he almost fell into the room and Jean was standing in the doorway looking somewhere between annoyed at something, and relieved to see him.

"Oh good, it's you," she said.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"Yes, come in, come in and tell us what you think about this," Jean said, stepping back into the room.

He was about to ask 'think of what?' when he saw what. Behind Jean he saw Amy dressed for bed in a hot pink, sleeveless silk gown with white lace, thin white straps holding it up, and a long flowing skirt. Jean turned to him when he didn't answer and she saw his bottom jaw hanging low and she elbowed him and he said, "Very nice, what is it?"

Amy rolled her eyes and said, "It's my nightgown, Murdock."

"Nightgown?" he repeated, "You look like you're going to the prom in that."

"That's what I said," Jean told him, "I can't stay here, I can't bunk with her, I'm coming down with you for the night."

"I don't think that would be a good idea," Murdock replied.

"Why not?"

"Well I don't know if you know this, but it just so happens to be against my religion to get my neck wrung for being involved with a man's daughter while in his house."

"Oh come on, Murdock, nothing's going to happen," Jean told him, "Besides, if they find out about us…then they can just deal with it."

Murdock shook his head, "No no, we're only going to be here for about 35 more hours, after that we'll be on the Gulfstream heading back to California and then it'll be back to things as usual, but I didn't fly us 3000 miles just to get this family going at each other's throats. Now come on, darling, be a good sport, it's not so bad sleeping with Amy, I mean once you get past her snoring, her cold feet, and her stealing your pillow in the night."

"Murdock!" Amy practically growled at him.

"What? I forget to mention the part where you talk in your sleep?"

"I do not!"

"How do you know?" Murdock asked.

"How would _you_?" she replied.

"Don't you remember, Amy? Two years ago we had to take that bus past the border because B.A. made it clear he was _not_ flying to Mexico, and he drove all night while we tried sleeping in the back."

"Oh."

"Come on, Murdock, I can't stay here with this woman, I'll go crazy having to room with her for the night, send Face up to sleep with her."

"Excuse me?" Amy asked.

"Oh just relax, Saint, what time do you get up tomorrow?"

"Around seven," Jean answered.

"Alright, so in little over 7 hours we'll all be up and then it'll be over," he said, "Until tomorrow night." He kissed her and added quickly, "Goodnight, sweetheart."

"Shut up," she told him as he headed out the door.

Amy laughed, "You two are quite a pair, aren't you?"

"We _were_," Jean answered as she turned back to the reporter, "_Did_ you two ever sleep together?"

Amy laughed harder and answered, "No."

Jean shrugged, "Had to ask."

"Tell me something, Jean, how much do you _know_ about the guys?" Amy asked.

"Enough."

"I mean, have they ever told you about their backgrounds?" Amy asked as she went over to her suitcase and dug through the contents to get out her clothes for the next day.

"Very little," Jean said, "Just as well, I don't tell them about myself either."

"Yeah…well if Hannibal ever tries feeding you a line about being a rancher, don't believe it," Amy told her.

Now it was Jean's turn to laugh as she asked, "You _did_?"

Amy turned and looked at Jean quizzically, "You wouldn't?"

"Hell no," Jean said, "Does Hannibal look like a rancher to you?"

Amy shrugged, "What does one look like?"

"Alright, I'll give you that, but don't you think if Hannibal was a rancher he would be doing that instead of dressing up as the rubber spider from Neptune or whatever?"

"I had just met them, I asked Hannibal where he comes from," she said, "I still haven't gotten the answer."

"Maybe he doesn't come _from_ anywhere," Jean told her.

"How does that work?" Amy asked.

"I mean," Jean said, "Maybe he doesn't _come_ from anywhere because he's already there. Think about it, Murdock comes from Texas, right?"

"If you believe that," Amy said.

"Alright, and B.A.'s from where, Chicago?"

"Detroit I think."

"Okay, so you've got two fish out of the water…" Jean laughed, "Fish, mudsucker, now I get it. Anyway, Face grew up in an orphanage _in_ California, that just leaves Hannibal, our fearless leader and all-time mystery man."

"And where does he come from?" Amy asked.

"I don't know, but it's always seemed to me that he knew a little too much about the movie business and Hollywood not to be a native."

"So he's from California too," Amy pieced it together.

"Maybe more than that," Jean added, "Incidentally what _did_ he do between Korea and Vietnam?"

For that, she knew none of them had any answer.


	5. Chapter 5

It was dark and quiet, all the lights were out in the living room and all its occupants asleep, except for the Colonel. Hannibal looked up at the ceiling in the dark, he knew it was after 12:30 and the others had fallen asleep a short while ago: B.A. had gotten the couch, Face and Murdock had gotten stuck on the floor in a mess of sleeping bags and blankets, and he was stretched out in the recliner. He tilted his head up slightly and looked at the other three, all of them lost in sleep, lost to their dreams or their memories, some better than others. He leaned back in the chair and looked back up to the ceiling. This was the one of the few times of the day when he allowed himself to think back and remember. He knew everything that there was to know about each one of his men, including where they came from, but it wasn't necessary for them to know the same thing about him.

Nobody knew where he came from, though Amy had tried to figure it out in the beginning, and apparently she still hadn't let it go. It was nice to know that somebody was curious about his own background, but he knew he would never give her the satisfaction of knowing the truth. This late in the game it wouldn't make any difference either way. But, since it was just him, and there wasn't any risk of someone disturbing him, he allowed himself to think back to his life _before_ Vietnam, _before_ the A-Team, it was a long road to travel though he'd made the journey countless times late in the night when he was alone in his apartment.

The world knew him as John 'Hannibal' Smith, but in all truthfulness, he was Jonathan Smith III, named after his father before him and his grandfather before that, or simply 'Johnny' as his parents referred to him. His father had worked in vaudeville in his younger days, as had his mother, but a few years before _he_ came along, his father had made the transition from traveling showman to jack-of-all trades in movies in the center of Hollywood: cameraman, director, stuntman, stunt coordinator, and uncredited actor. Of course this was back when films were a dime a dozen, all you had to do was take the camera, drive to any location, start shooting and all it cost you was the price of the gasoline; it was a hit and miss business where some people got rich but a lot did not, and his father did not but he made a comfortable living from it.

That had been how he got his own start in the movies, he father had taught him most of the things he knew when he was young. As a child he'd learned how to rope and ride, how to mount and dismount, how to fight, how to tuck and roll, how to shoot, and as a hangover from his father's old career days, he also learned how to get thrown around and how to throw someone around in return. He learned all the tricks of the movies, both in front of the camera and behind it: about makeup, acting, breakaway props, flash explosives, guns loaded with blanks, and his education on films and everything that went into making them surpassed his formal education.

Neither of his parents had lasted in school long, both of them dropped out young to start working and support their families; even _he_ had an incomplete school record though he'd gotten everything out of it that he needed. His father had been a good man, a strong man, not an easy man to get along with necessarily, but he was everything that mattered and even now Hannibal could remember every detail about the man he admired his whole young life, right down to the cigars he smoked. That had been another thing his father had taught him, the difference in good and cheap cigars, just as he'd also taught him how to drink, always the finest quality and never quite enough of it, so he would always be in control, that was the difference in guys who came walking out of fights and the ones who had to be carried out.

He remembered his mother too, as a kid she always looked so tall and strong, as he grew he found out she was short and petite, but she was still strong, and she could hold her own just as well as his father. He'd seen his mother knock men into walls, out of windows, he'd seen his father, his big strong father, lift men up over his head and toss them across the room, seen him beat other guys over the head with chairs and tables, anything that was on hand either became a projectile, a shield, or a club. Boy how he missed going with them out to the bars when he was a kid. That was even more amusing than the films he had to pay a dime to see on Saturdays, or during the week when he cut school.

He'd also seen his mother fend for herself against cutthroats that broke into the house when his father was gone. He couldn't remember _why_ their house was such a hot spot for people to bust into, but it happened more than once, and always somebody different, but she always seemed to have something in mind. His mother was a mastermind at substituting anything on hand for a weapon since they almost never had a gun in the house. He specifically remembered one time when his mother picked up a seltzer bottle that she kept full of her favorite brandy, and sprayed it on the lit candles at the table where the burglars stood. The flames about touched the ceiling, the only thing in her favor was that the breeze coming in the window had been strong enough that the fire couldn't touch back to the source of its accelerant, though it wouldn't have made much difference for her because she smashed the bottle over one guy's head and punched him in the jaw when he was dazed by it. Yes, he seemed to come from a well rounded stock of people.

When the war in Korea broke out, he'd been among the almost 2 million men caught up in the draft who got sent over to fight. It was while he was over there that he received the news that his father had died. He'd always wondered if maybe he was better off not being sent home until long after the funeral; never having that chance to say goodbye, or to see his father for the last time, made it easier for him to deal with what had happened, as if the old man had just disappeared off the face of the earth. He'd seen enough men die in battle, dying a civilian's death didn't make it any easier to grasp the concept of. When he _did_ finally come home, it had been to find that _everything_ he knew was gone. The house where he grew up had burnt down shortly after his father died. His mother had been committed to an asylum after a doctor diagnosed her as being hysterical from the grief.

Losing his father without seeing him die had been easy, finding his mother alive and seeing her had been the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. He went to visit her and couldn't believe it; his mother had become 20 years older since he'd left home; the doctors had her on some kind of medication and she just stared straight ahead at a wall, never seeing her son, never acknowledging that he was there. He checked into a motel for the time being, but returned to the asylum every day to see his mother, hoping to see some difference. Finally she came around, she recognized him and tried to act like everything was normal, but he quickly found out she was still in shock from becoming a widow; one time when he was getting ready to leave, she sat up and scolded him for completely walking past his father without saying so much as one word to him. Stunned, he turned back and looked at her, then he said calmly, "It's alright, Ma, I already talked to him on the way in."

Maybe his mother would never get better but he couldn't leave her in that mental hospital. When he was able to get his own place he talked to the doctors and got her released to him; when she had a home of her own again it seemed to undo some of the damage and she started acting more like her old self and tried to make herself look pretty like she used to. But the ghosts were still there, for the rest of her life she spoke to his father as if he was right in the room and she insisted he was, always pointing him out to her son, who always looked; and despite nothing being in the general direction of his mother's finger but thin air, he put on his best act possible to go along with her hallucination. The fact that he continued to smoke his father's preferred brand of cigars seemed to help her some, as if that odor was some faint way of keeping his father around and still alive in her mind. He had to laugh, through both of their denial, their refusal to accept what they knew was true, they had become two peas in a pod, and her delusions withstanding, they got along perfectly.

By the time Vietnam was rounding up draftees for the slaughter, he had lost both of his parents, and in caring for his mother he had passed up any thought of getting married and settling down, so he'd gone halfway around the world without any particular care about coming back in one piece because there wasn't anyone back there waiting for him to return alive. This made it easy for him to lose himself in the danger and the adrenalin rush that followed every bombing, every firefight, he lived for the thrill associated with walking right in the enemy's front door so to speak, but it backfired because he always came out of every scrap imaginable still alive and in one piece. When it came time that he was responsible for the other soldiers and he had a whole team working under his command, then the instinct for self preservation returned to him and he knew he had to stay alive, if nothing else, then for their wellbeing because nobody else could plan attacks and escapes like he did.

And from there, it was a short hop, skip and jump from a team to his Team, and the rest was history. He'd returned to his native country with nothing and nobody to go back to, but it didn't matter because instead he had the men he came back _with_: Face and Murdock had also returned with nobody awaiting their arrival, and B.A.'s ties with his mother were cut since that would be easy for the military to put on their radar, so they had all come back pretty much in the same boat. Without anybody else who cared if they lived or died, they relied on each other for survival, and ironically that had been the beginning of a beautiful thing. Jonathan Smith III had died somewhere between the jungles of Saigon and the concrete jungles of Los Angeles, and instead Hannibal Smith had been born in his place, and so shall he stay for the remainder of his life, however short or however long that may be, though if he had things his way, it was going to be a very long time.

He hadn't changed for bed, he was still wearing his clothes from that day; he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a new cigar and took in its very old and very familiar aroma. He didn't let himself think about the past too often, only when he knew there was time for it because he easily got lost in the memories for hours on end. That had been one large contributing factor to his sudden decision to get everybody loaded up and flown out here. He could never go home again but all the same, Los Angeles held a lot of his memories, and every once in a while he needed to get away from them, and like his trusty lieutenant, holidays were among the worst; the difference was Face needed to get away from the memories of having nobody, Hannibal had to get away from the memories of having a family, and then having it taken away from him.

He had decided spending the day with somebody else's family would help, and so far it had; Jean's mother was a nice woman, but she wasn't anything like his own mother, and her father was a pleasant man but he wasn't anything like his own father either. He was sure tomorrow would go off without a hitch, and then once the day had passed, it would be a round trip back to L.A. and back to their everyday lives; but he was grateful for this much needed break from that place and that routine, everybody needed to get away from their lives once in a while.

* * *

Murdock hadn't had any complaints to sleeping on the floor with Face, it still beat the hell out of his bed back at the V.A.; though one thing he'd forgotten about was that the hospital was a temperature controlled climate, whereas the floor of a New York home in late November was colder than a witch's elbow. He tried burrowing deeper down into his sleeping bag but he was still cold. He was starting to consider the idea of bunking with the turkey in the oven when he felt a sudden breeze cut through the air above him and something hit him. He opened his eyes when he realized a heavy blanket had been draped over him, but somebody pushed him back down and he heard somebody whisper, "Shhhh."

Even though the room was dark, he was able to tell that it was Jean, she slipped into the open bag beside him and laid down alongside him.

"What's going on?" he whispered.

"Nothing," Jean answered quietly, "I got Face to switch with me for the night."

Murdock laughed quietly and said, "I'll bet Amy's going to just _love_ this."

But in fact, when Face reached Jean's bedroom door, it opened before he could grab the knob and he saw Amy standing in the doorway, tapping her foot as if she were expecting him.

"The front desk said there's been a mix-up with our rooms," he whispered to her.

"Uh huh, come on in, Face," Amy said as she held the door for him.

"So uh…" Face said as he stepped into the room, "How's this going to work?"

"Get into bed, Face," she told him.

"Oh, it's going to work like that, eh?" he asked, "Which side are you sleeping on?"

"Doesn't matter," Amy answered.

"Well," Face told her, and saw that the bed was positioned so the right side was closest to the door, "I'll take the left, that way if her parents do a wakeup call in the morning, they'll see you first and just assume she's on the other side."

"Suit yourself," she replied as she followed behind him and slid in on the right side.

Face rolled over onto his back and felt something press into his spine and he sat up to see what it was, and he saw a large metal ladle lying in the middle of the bed and asked Amy, "What's that for?"

"Oh, just a new take on an old joke," she said, "I didn't have any barbed wire on hand so I figured this ought to keep you on your side of the bed during the night."

"Ha ha, very funny," Face remarked as he scooted over closer to the edge of the bed, "Oh well, it's just for one night, right?"

"I hope so," Amy replied, "The next time we go somewhere I say we shell out the money for a hotel, spending the night with you isn't _my_ idea of a good time."

"Well believe me, the feeling's mutual," Face said as he drew the covers up, "Goodnight, Amy."

"Goodnight," she replied as she pulled up the covers on her half of the bed.

They lay facing in opposite directions and neither said anything for a minute before Amy decided to break the silence, "Face?"

"What?" he asked.

"Do you think Murdock and Jean really were in love when they were married?"

He shrugged, "Who knows? I mean who knows if either one of them is even sane enough to know what it is?"

Amy thought about it for a minute and asked him, "You think they're in love now?"

"I think they need each other, that much is obvious," Face told her, "But who needs the other more, I don't know…I think Murdock's the only thing keeping Jean grounded in reality."

"What about Murdock's side of it?"

"Well…" Face shifted under the blankets and readjusted them, "I have to admit it's a bit odd _him_ having a girlfriend for a change."

"And you're in a dry spell," Amy said with a small chuckle.

"Ha ha," Face dryly remarked, "_But_, I know Jean well enough to know that _I_ am not missing out on anything on that one. In my opinion a guy would _have_ to be crazy, to be stupid enough to fall for her." Amy continued giggling and he finally turned over to see her as he asked, "Just _what_ is so funny?"

"I think the great Templeton Peck's eyes are starting to turn green," she said, "It really bugs you that there's one woman out there who doesn't want you."

"Amy, how did we turn this conversation to being about _you_?" he asked.

Amy scowled at him, then reached to the nightstand on her side, picked up her hairbrush and whacked him on the seat of his pajamas. He stifled a yelp since they didn't need the attention and he turned over and scowled at her in return, but she sat up with a Cheshire cat grin on her face and her hairbrush held out at arm's reach like a weapon. Face put his hands up in surrender and turned back over and pulled the covers back up to go to sleep.

* * *

If anybody would ever ask Hannibal Smith what he dreamed about, he would lie and say he never had dreams. Really, the last thing he needed was Murdock trying to psychoanalyze the things that haunted his subconscious at night. Tonight especially, he wouldn't want his captain taking psychological potshots at what was racing around through his mind. Naturally he wasn't aware at the time that it was only a dream, because like all good dreams, when it hit him, it felt like something very real that was happening.

They were at Jean's home, but her parents weren't there, and Amy wasn't with them either. It was night, dinner had passed a couple hours ago and they all settled down in the living room with a round of beers. It should've occurred to Hannibal at that point that it was a dream, because _only_ in a dream would B.A. knock back a bottle of Coors Light, for that matter _he_ wouldn't touch anything _light_ either in the real world. Light beer, his father would roll over in his grave to think his son would even touch the stuff.

Anyway, Jean must've had more to drink than they had because after a couple of bottles, she started acting loopy. Hannibal suggested Murdock take her upstairs and put her to bed, getting her upstairs however was no easy task, first she tripped over everybody's feet, including her own, then she stopped and snaked her hand into the pockets of everybody she passed by; grabbing everything from Murdock's bubble gum to Face's pocket comb, to some of B.A.'s rings, as well as Hannibal's cigars. They collected their stuff and sent her up the stairs. On the way, she tripped Murdock and they both tumbled like a couple of bowling pins.

"Colonel," Murdock said as he got to his feet, "Can't we just leave her down here to sleep it off?"

However, Jean had other plans, rising up with her eyes closed and her arms stretched out like a cliché sleepwalker, she got to her feet, and started singing a limerick as she stepped up the stairs in a wobbly manner, somehow managing to reach the top without falling, and staggering off to find a room. Face looked up to the second floor and asked as he pointed towards the balcony above, "You think she'll be alright up there, Hannibal?"

"Yes," he answered humorously, "But I doubt she'll ever get cast in a religious play."

A few minutes later the front door was kicked open and they were ambushed by an onslaught of MPs, and bringing up the rear was none other than…

"Top of the morning, Colonel Lynch," Face and Hannibal said with a mock salute, Face added, "Greetings from the Fort Bragg class of '73."

"Well Francis, what brings you out here to our humble abode?" Hannibal asked, "I thought I told Murdock to yank in that welcome mat."

"Shut up, Smith," Lynch told him, "You're not going to get away this time."

"Oh I wouldn't _dream_ of it," he replied sarcastically.

"Who else is in this house, Smith?" Lynch asked.

"Nobody."

"You're lying," Lynch snapped.

"Well if you knew I was lying, why did you ask me?" Hannibal asked.

Lynch turned to a couple of MPs and told them, "Search the upstairs."

"Hey now wait a minute, you can't do that!" Face said.

"Shut up, Peck," Lynch told him, then returned his attention and asked Hannibal, "Who's upstairs?"

"Uh…" Hannibal took a slow puff on his cigar and said, "Murdock's dog, Billy."

"He's here?" Murdock asked.

"Shut up, fool," B.A. told him.

"I'm giving you five seconds, Smith, you tell me who's upstairs or you're going to regret it," Lynch demanded.

Hannibal sucked on his cigar for a few seconds and blew out a ring and said, "Laurel and Hardy."

"King Kong," Face added.

"The Eagle," Murdock said.

"Who's the Eagle?" Face asked.

"He's a masked vigilante like the Lone Ranger," Murdock answered.

"Oh yeah, I remember that serial," Hannibal said, "I preferred the Lone Ranger."

"Doesn't everybody?" Murdock asked.

"So why isn't the Lone Ranger upstairs?" Face asked Murdock.

"Because it's The Eagle, that's why," he answered.

"Shut up all of you!" Lynch screamed at them.

"Colonel!" a voice called from upstairs.

"What?" Lynch and Hannibal asked as they looked up to the second floor.

The two MPs were coming back down the stairs, each carrying one side of Jean who was passed out and for some reason, dressed in a blue feather boa peignoir over her corporal's jacket and blue jeans.

"We found her upstairs in one of the bedrooms," one MP told Lynch, "Unconscious."

"Hmm," Lynch turned to Hannibal and asked him, "And _who_ is this?"

"That?" Hannibal asked, "That is my mother."

For some reason, B.A., Face and Murdock all broke out snickering like a bunch of school kids after the teacher sits on a tack.

"Get her up," Lynch told the MPs, "We'll make her talk."

"No you can't," Face said, "She's a mime, talking is against her religion."

"Shut up, Peck, or I'll have you shot at sunrise," Lynch said.

"You can't do that, Facey doesn't get up that early," Murdock told him.

Lynch ignored them and instead returned his attention to Hannibal and said to him, "It's the end of your run, Smith, you're not going to get out of this one."

Hannibal maintained his usual casual look that said he had something planned, and said, "Of course not, Lynch."

"And don't think that heart attack routine's going to work this time either," Lynch added.

"I wouldn't dream of it, Lynch," Hannibal replied, a large grin forming on his face.

"Nag nag nag," Jean murmured as she woke up, "That's all you ever are," she shook her head and upon seeing Lynch, asked the others, "Who's this?"

"Jean, you remember Colonel Lynch," Face said, "He's captured us."

Jean seemed to catch on quickly and she stood straight and, addressing Lynch specifically, said as she went over towards him, "This is Lynch?" She got right in his face and said, "You ought to shave that mustache, it looks like a pregnant caterpillar doing yoga."

"Jean, please," Hannibal said to her in an almost sincere tone, "This is very serious, we've been captured, and I think we're about to be shot."

Jean turned back to Lynch when she heard that and said in a cynical tone, "That's right, kill us all, don't even think for one minute about sparing any of our lives, or my baby's for that matter."

Lynch did a double take and said, "What?"

"What did she say?" Face asked.

"I think she said 'baby'," Murdock answered.

"Oh boy," B.A. grumbled.

"A baby," Hannibal repeated, sounding only slightly surprised.

"That's right," Jean said as she marched over to the others, and grabbed Murdock unexpectedly and said, "And the little fruitcake here's the father."

"Good Lord," Lynch murmured, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell down in a dead faint.

Hannibal chuckled and said, "Nice work, kid, but that's also a trick that'll only work once."

"Yeah, but this isn't," Jean replied, and they ambushed the MPs.

Everybody grabbed a partner for the dance; Face shoved his into the wall, Murdock delivered an uppercut to the jaw of his guy, Hannibal kicked another one in the chest and sent him reeling back, B.A. picked one up over his head and tossed him across the room. The one Jean jumped on was a guy twice her size and he kicked her in the stomach and knocked her down.

"Oh ho, Jack the Ripper eh?" Murdock asked as he came to her aid, "Hitting little girls, why don't you try messing with somebody your own size?"

But he'd forgotten he wasn't the guy's size either, and he got grabbed up and thrown against a wall head on.

"Hey sucker!" B.A. grabbed the man and got ready to toss him, "Nobody does that to my little brother and gets away with it," and suddenly the MP became airborne as well.

"B.A.," Murdock said as he slowly climbed to his feet, "You mean that? You mean it when you said I'm your brother?"

"Shut up fool, 'fore I throw you into that wall again," B.A. told him.

Jean pulled herself up on her knees and noticed Lynch starting to stir and she yelled to Hannibal, "He's getting up!"

Hannibal turned but Jean was already to her feet and running over towards him, but she dropped back to her knees and snatched Lynch's sidearm out of his holster and held it on him. When he opened his eyes and became aware of where he was, she told him, "One wrong move and you're dead. Now, very slowly, get up and put your hands over your head." Lynch moved in inches, and every step of the way Jean kept his gun aimed at him and she said, "Today is your lucky day, Lynch, there's a C-5A heading out to Nicaragua tomorrow morning, and we're sending our guys over there to help assist in the slaughter. And you know where that leaves you?" She laughed humorously and said, "Of course you're too old and too _fat_ to be of any use in combat, but they've got a job for you over there…are you familiar with the term dirty detail?" A grim smile found its way to her face and she laughed bitterly and nodded her head like she'd gone mad and said, "That's right, 16 hours straight of stuffing body bags, you fall down on the job and we'll put you in one too."

"You're crazy," Lynch told her.

"Well _of course_ I'm crazy!" Jean replied, "I am _infected_! You see, Lynch, everything that a baby gets from its father goes from the father _in_to the mother and then passes _down_ into the baby. So until this kid is born I've got his craziness swimming all around inside of me, of _course_ I'm crazy."

Lynch's eyes doubled in size when she said that, "Then you're really…then he's…"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jean nodded frantically, losing whatever patience she had, "Him, daddy, me, mama…"

"Me Tarzan," Face added humorously.

Hannibal couldn't resist getting in on the fun and commenting, "Me John, big tree."

B.A. snorted and added dryly, "Yeah, and me about to lose my mind being surrounded by a whole _lot_ of crazy fools."

"Oh come on, B.A.," Hannibal said over a light chuckle, "Don't you think it's romantic?"

"No, it's not," he replied.

"Oh well," Hannibal responded as he drew in a long breath from his cigar.

* * *

Oh boy what a dream, Hannibal thought as he realized he'd been asleep. He wondered how long he'd actually been asleep, and then he noticed that it was already getting light in the living room through the windows. He sat up in the recliner and saw everybody else was still asleep; only now Face was gone and Jean was on the floor with Murdock, the two of them bundled together in one large blanket and laying in the middle of the two sleeping bags. Hannibal didn't have to guess what happened to Face, or what had gone on here last night; in fact he had a very _good_ idea of what went on after he'd fallen asleep. He almost hated to wake them up, if he could bring himself to admit it, they _did_ look cute together. He checked his watch and saw that it was a quarter to seven; he put the recliner down in its regular position and got up, and knelt down beside the conjoined lump on the floor and shook Jean's side to wake her up.

"Hmm, hmm, huh, what is it?" she asked as she started to come around.

She rubbed her eyes and then saw Hannibal hovering over her.

"Go get Face up," he told her, "And switch back, it's almost 7 o' clock."

It took a couple of seconds for the words to register with Jean, when they did her eyes popped wide open and she said, "Oh, right!" and scurried out from under the blanket. Hannibal was amused to see he wasn't the only one who hadn't bothered with changing for bed last night, Jean was still wearing the T-shirt and jeans she had on the previous day; whereas Murdock lay on the floor still asleep, dressed for the night in a set of Mighty Mouse pajamas. Hannibal chuckled under his breath and leaned down and kissed Murdock on his forehead and said quietly, "Happy Thanksgiving, son."

Murdock grumbled something and turned on his side, then he opened one eye, and the other, and saw Hannibal standing over him, "What's going on, Colonel?"

"It's morning, Captain, did you sleep well?"

"Uh…yeah, I think so," Murdock said with a confused look on his face as he sat up and noticed the empty side of his makeshift bed, "Uh…Colonel…wasn't there _some_body here with me last night?"

"Yeah two of them," Hannibal answered, "Don't worry, they're just upstairs getting ready for the day, Face ought to be down in a minute."

Murdock looked a bit more hopeful at that and he said, "Then it wasn't just a dream."

He wasn't exactly sure what _it_ was, which was normal whenever Murdock went on about something, but he felt it was safe to say, "No, it was real."

This news seemed to please the captain and he smiled at Hannibal. Hannibal patted Murdock's leg through the blanket and said, "Feel like getting up and dressed for the day?"

"Sure," Murdock pulled his legs out of the sleeping bag and started to get up, "By the way, Happy Thanksgiving, Colonel."

Hannibal nodded and said, "Yeah, I got a feeling it's going to be a good day."


	6. Chapter 6

Hannibal waited until Murdock had gotten up and left the living room to get dressed before he turned his attention to the staff sergeant sleeping on the couch. Hannibal hovered over B.A. and reached one hand down to nudge his shoulder, "B.A."

"Mmm," he grumbled in his sleep.

"B.A.," he tried again, louder this time, and nudging him with more force.

"Eh?" the other man opened his eyes and looked up, "What's going on, Hannibal?"

"It's morning…so what happened last night?"

B.A. didn't have to ask what Hannibal meant, he explained, "Faceman and the girl switched places last night around 1 o' clock, he went upstairs and she got down on the floor with the crazy fool. They didn't say much and then went to sleep, and that's the last I heard anything out of them all night."

And since Hannibal knew that B.A. did _not_ sleep well when Murdock was up to something, he took that as a sign that they had slept through the rest of the night.

"You have to admit, they are kind of cute together," he said.

B.A. snorted and grumbled something about 'one man's opinion'.

"B.A., let me ask you a question," Hannibal said, "In all seriousness, if somebody were to throw Murdock into a wall, what would you do?"

B.A.'s usual 'I-don't-care-what-happens-to-the-crazy-fool' act was gone for one brief moment and he answered plainly, "I'd kill them."

Hannibal nodded with a pleased expression on his face and said, "Good answer. Alright, let's get up and make ourselves presentable, the whole house is going to be up soon."

"Getting dressed up for a dead bird, now _that's_ crazy," B.A. told him.

* * *

Jean had changed into a different set of clothes and was halfway through buttoning her shirt when she heard someone knocking on the bedroom door. Leaving the rest of the buttons for later she went over and opened the door, revealing Murdock, who said to her, "Don't you know you're not supposed to open a door without asking who it is first?"

"Fine," Jean slammed the door in his face and asked, "Who is it?"

"It's me, Howlin' Mad Murdock," he answered.

Jean opened the door again and let him in.

"Is everybody decent in here?" he asked as he stepped in, glancing around to make sure he wasn't intruding on somebody.

"There's only me and I've never been decent," Jean answered as she did up the rest of the buttons on her shirt, "Amy's getting dressed in the bathroom, what's up?"

"I left my clothes up here that I was going to wear today," he answered.

Jean pointed, "Over there on the dresser."

"Thanks," Murdock said as he went over and picked them up.

He turned back to Jean and paused for a second before kissing her on the cheek. Her eyes widened and she asked him, "What was that for?"

"I had a wonderful time last night," he said as he resumed his changing place behind the closet door.

"We didn't do anything last night," she reminded him.

"I know, I still had a great time," he told her, "I love having somebody to do nothing with, it's a lot better than…"

He didn't finish that thought but Jean knew what he was getting at; better than not having anybody around to do anything with every night back in the hospital. When he came out from behind the door dressed for the day and walked over to her, she reached over, cupped his chin in her hand and kissed him.

"I had a great time last night too," she told him, "I wish it was tomorrow already."

"Don't say that, it'll come soon enough," he replied, "We're only here for one more day, so let's make the most of it. Now personally, I am having a marvelous time getting to know your parents, it gives me a lot of insight as to what stock you come from, and it's all good."

Jean turned away and stifled a laugh as she buried her face in one hand and said, "You've been taking charm lessons from Face, haven't you?"

"Oh me? Never," he replied, "You know with him it's all just a con."

"Exactly."

Murdock's face scrunched up into a combination pout and pucker like he'd just gotten a mouthful of lemon juice and he said, feigning hurt feelings, "Now you know me better than that."

Jean laughed and remarked, "Of course I do, I just love teasing you."

He smirked and batted his eyelashes at her, "Oh really?" he took two steps towards her and pushed her back onto the bed and pinned her down while he playfully kissed her repeatedly, every time missing her mouth like the broad side of a barn. Jean laughed and tried pushing him off of her, though to no avail, and told him, "Down, boy!"

The door opened and Amy walked in, got a few steps in when she saw the two of them on the bed and said, "Whoa! Excuse me," and doubled back for the door.

"Amy," Jean said over her laughing, "Get over here and get this sick puppy off of me!"

That was the wrong thing to say because Murdock switched gears and simultaneously panted and whined and licked her face. Amy came over and grabbed Murdock by the waistband of his jeans and the bottom of his jacket and tried pulling him off but Murdock growled and barked and clawed his way back to the top, but between the two of them they managed to shove him off of her and he fell to the floor.

"It's a good thing your parents are already downstairs," Amy told Jean, "I don't know _what_ they'd make of this."

"Oh I'm sure once they get to know Murdock a little better, they won't think anything of it," Jean replied, and glanced down at Murdock, who was sitting up on his haunches and holding his arms up like a dog begging, and it was impossible not to see the innocent look in his eyes as he continued to pant and whine.

Jean clapped her hands twice and pointed to the floor and repeated, "Down, boy." This time he obeyed and sat down.

Jean got up from the bed and Amy noted that she and Murdock were dressed similarly today: they both wore white sneakers, blue jeans and short sleeved button up dress shirts of almost the identical color. Somewhere in the back of her head she could hear the Twilight Zone theme humming, but she didn't say anything and let it go at that.

* * *

Murdock took in a large, deep breath of the cold air as he and Jean walked around the front yard and said, "Ah, there's nothing like borderline freezing cold air snapping all your pores shut to make you feel wide awake first thing in the morning."

"Yeah, you can say that again," Jean dryly replied.

Murdock rubbed his index finger to scratch over his top lip and asked her, "So how come you walked out on breakfast this morning?"

"Oh I never eat until lunch on Thanksgiving," she answered, "Don't see any point in eating 4 hours before stuffing yourself for the day."

"True," Murdock said. He'd followed Jean out of the house when she excused herself from the breakfast table and he said to her, "I guess it wouldn't hurt me to do that either."

"I'll say," she told him, "You need all the room you can get in that teacup stomach of yours."

Murdock mockingly scowled at her and put his hands over the front of his jacket when she said that.

"Anyway," Jean added, "Mom and I were looking over all the food for today and I gotta go back to the store because we're going to need more stuff if we're going to feed everybody."

"Can I come?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Oh boy!" he said excitedly, "We're going to the store!"

Jean turned and glared at him confusedly and said, "You need to get out more, Murdock."

He laughed as he followed her out to the rental car at the curbside. Jean did a sharp U-turn and they went down the street and made the five block trip down to the supermarket.

"So what do we need?" Murdock asked her.

"How many deviled eggs can you eat?" she asked him.

"Well let's see," he counted off on his fingers, "One egg makes two deviled eggs…I can eat four eggs at once so…"

"Never mind," Jean said, "How many deviled eggs could B.A. eat?"

"B.A.?" Murdock repeated, "He can eat so many deviled eggs that he'd need an exorcist instead of an antacid to make the indigestion pass."

"So we probably need two dozen more eggs, and then the rolls…what kind do you eat?"

"The kind made out of bread," he answered.

Jean glared at him with a typical 'don't be a smart aleck' look and said, "These days there must be about 500 different types of rolls."

"And just think of the people who don't eat bread and miss out on all of them," Murdock pondered.

Jean shook her head dismissively and said, "We usually get two different kinds anyway, but with all of you guys, maybe three or four."

"What about cranberry sauce?" Murdock asked.

"What about it?" Jean asked, "I don't eat that junk, how much can _you_ eat?"

"Is it jellied or all berries and stems?"

"Murdock," it was obvious that Jean was trying not to lose it but coming close to doing so anyway, "I already told you I don't eat the stuff, how the hell would I know what kind it is?"

He shrugged and said, "Well, I won't have any either. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just tired, I had a weird dream last night," she answered.

"Must be going around," he said, "Though mine was alright."

"Quit bragging," she warned him.

"Well what was yours about?" he asked as they walked down the next aisle.

Jean stopped in her tracks with a blank look on her face that said she was trying desperately to remember now. "Body bags," she finally said, "…_Lots_ of body bags. That's about all I can remember of it now. That and that fruitcake Lynch, just _why_ did I have to bring him up the other day?"

"Well it's only natural," Murdock said as they started walking down the aisle again, "Decker's back in California cooling his heels over the holiday, Lynch is the only other colonel you know who's been after us, he's dropped out of the picture for months, no telling where he could be…"

"Stop trying to cheer me up," Jean cynically replied.

"Hon, it's like I told you before, dreams are just the mind's way of bringing the subconscious up to the conscious level, you had Lynch on your mind and that brought about the dream, it doesn't mean anything."

"I hope not," she replied, "I'd hate to have to kill somebody today." As she walked along, Murdock heard her murmur something under her breath and distinctly heard the words 'body bags' again.

"You know what's really bugging you is that thing you were talking about yesterday," he told her, "About that new role you're going to audition for."

"Why would that bother me?" Jean asked.

"Jean…take it from a guy who was there, handling body bags is bad enough, _nobody_ wants to try them on for size from the inside, real or not, it's a bad position for anybody. Now when we get back to the studio, why don't you just tell the guy that they need to settle for something slightly _less_ realistic for once? Tell them to stuff the bag full of potatoes or something, something to give it the bulk but nobody has to asphyxiate on that hot rubber smelling air."

"I have another option," she reminded him, "I don't have to get this role at all…you tell me, is it worth losing your mind for a paycheck?"

"Don't ask me, I lost mine for nothing," he told her.

"Alright then, you tell me, I get shot in the chest, make it through that without any or much long term damage, you know, guns don't bother me, helicopters don't bother me, I can still fly, I can still get in the line of fire, I'm alright, so why am I going crazy over something that's not even real?"

"Now I'm confused," Murdock said, "Just for clarification, are you actually asking me or is this all just rhetorical and you're thinking out loud?"

"Murdock."

"Well if you want my answer, speaking as a professional on the human psyche, I can assure you most people's most paralyzing fears stem from things that are either non-existent, or are actually molehills compared to the mountains they build them up to be, it's very common."

"Not for me," Jean told him.

"Saint, you are not losing your mind, now people who have a dreaded phobia of the number 13, _they're_ the ones that need the butterfly net," he replied, "Them, and the ones who can't let their food touch, oh and the people who have nightmares of being used as a couch by extremely _fat_ people."

Jean stopped and he walked into her back, she turned towards him and asked, "_Who_ worries about that?"

"People who are truly in need of psychiatric help," he answered, "So uh…we got everything?"

Jean nodded, "Two dozen eggs, two jars of olives, dozen wheat rolls, dozen white rolls, that ought to be everything."

"Oh wait, we forgot something, I'll be right back," Murdock said, and tore off back the way they'd come, and came back a few seconds later hauling two gallons of milk, "If we're going to be staying at the house for another day, we're going to have to keep our mudsucker in good supply."

Jean snorted and said, "He ought to try a beer sometime, it'd do him a world of good."

* * *

"Boy, it's too bad I didn't bring my football," Murdock said later that morning when he and Jean had gone back out to the front yard to kill time until lunch, and to get away from everyone else in the meantime, "There is _nothing_ like a game of football after a big Thanksgiving dinner, you know?"

"No I don't know, because I don't play football because I hate any game that has penalties for everything short of breathing wrong," Jean replied.

He waved her comment off and said, "At least we ought to be able to get one on the TV later today. But there is _nothing_ like being there on the 50 yard line for yourself."

"And how would you know?" she asked him.

"Hey, I've played football, I know the game well," and either consciously or subconsciously, Murdock started to act it out on the front lawn, acting like he was taking on all of the Pittsburgh Steelers single handedly, "Hugging the pigskin in one hand and running, running, running, dodging 300 pound meatheads at every turn," he made a skidding noise as he turned on his heel and changed directions, "35, 52, 43, hike! And, o'er to the left, shoot, gimme the ball, I gotta run with the ball, and I'm over the…oomph!" Murdock tripped over a large tree root half sticking out of the ground and he narrated, "And it's dog pile on number 13. Wait, wait, he's pulling himself out of the pile of limbs and armpits, he's still holding the ball, he's up, he's going, going, gone! And it's a TOUCHDOWN!" He mimicked spiking a football and started dancing and marching up and down the yard while providing the sound effects of a victorious game.

Jean stood to the side watching him and laughing and she told him, "Murdock, you are the _only_ guy in the world who could _ever_ make that game interesting."

Murdock smiled at her and chuckled, but that quickly left and was replaced with a mild look of terror as he saw past Jean to the car driving by on the otherwise empty street and he remarked, "Uh oh!"

Jean turned to see what the problem was and got her answer when she recognized Lynch's profile in the driver's window of the car that passed by them. Jean slapped her cheek and couldn't help asking, "What the hell? What's he doing here?!"

* * *

It has passed by so quickly he almost hadn't seen it. But Francis Lynch stepped on the brakes and looked back to the house he had just driven by; standing out in the front yard were two people, one of them wearing a brown bomber jacket and a blue cap. Surely it couldn't be…or could it? If it _was_ Murdock, Lynch knew, then that meant the A-Team was here, in this town, on this very block. And if that was the case, then he was going to catch them, and then he ought to be able to transfer back to his old position back at the Pentagon.

He decided to check it out, so he gripped the wheel all the way to the side to make a sharp U-turn and came back up the street and pulled his car up to the curb outside the house. By now the two people who had been standing out in the yard were gone, but he knew they couldn't have gone far. The most likely place was the house right up ahead. He may not have had the same pull here that he did in California during his endless pursuits of the A-Team before he got demoted and transferred out, but whoever was inside the house if there were other people involved, wouldn't know that. That was the good thing about civilians, most of them were too _stupid_ to know much of anything, it always gave him and people like him more leeway when dealing with members of the public.

As Lynch first checked the car in front of his at the curb to make sure there wasn't anybody in it, he was being watched from the window at the front door. As soon as Murdock realized Lynch was in the area, they both ran into the house and told the others what had happened and everybody went to the front hall to see it for themselves.

"I told you it was Lynch," Jean told Hannibal.

"Yep, that's him alright," Hannibal confirmed as he drew the curtain back into place.

"Oh this is just great!" Face groaned, "Now what do we do?"

"I've got an idea," Hannibal told them.

"Yeah, so do I," Jean said, and she went over to Murdock and grabbed his jacket by the unzipped sides and said, "Gimme that."

"What're you going to do?" Murdock asked as he shrugged his arms out of his jacket.

"I fooled Lynch once with this act, maybe I can again," Jean told him as she put on his jacket, "But of course, Murdock, you realize what this means, don't you?"

"What?" he asked.

She took the cap off his head and put it on her own and said, "This is going to go one of two ways. And we just better pray that whichever one I take, actually works."

"What are they?" Face asked, already dreading whatever the answers might be.


	7. Chapter 7

The door opened and Mrs. Rhodes appeared in the doorway and, seeing Lynch for the first time, asked, "Yes?"

"Good morning, ma'am, I am Colonel Lynch of the United States Army, is there anybody in your house?"

"Yes," she answered, "Why? Is something the matter?"

"Ma'am, I am in pursuit of four escaped fugitives, and I have reason to believe that they may be nearby, would you object if I came in?"

Mrs. Rhodes looked apprehensive for a few seconds but said, "Of course not…come on in," and pulled the door open further.

"Do you live here alone, ma'am?" Lynch asked her.

"No, my husband lives here and my daughter's down for Thanksgiving, would you like to speak to them?"

"Yes," he said as he glanced around every corner between the front hall and the dining room.

Mrs. Rhodes went over to the kitchen doorway and called out, "Jean! Come out here, please." She turned back to Lynch and said, "You said you're after four…fugitives?"

"That's right, ma'am," he answered, "And I think I'm about to finally catch them."

"Are they dangerous?" she asked.

"The U.S. Army wouldn't be after them if they weren't, ma'am," he answered.

She nodded understandingly and turned back to the kitchen, "Oh, Jean, come here."

Lynch turned to the sound of approaching footsteps, and he felt his eyes bug out and his heart drop down into his stomach. The girl standing in the kitchen doorway was dressed in a brown bomber jacket and a blue cap.

"Yeah, Mom?" she asked.

"Jean," Mrs. Rhodes said to her daughter, "This is Colonel Lynch from the Army, he's looking for four men, he thinks they're around here somewhere."

"Not here," Jean shook her head, "Nothing exciting _ever_ happens around here."

She noticed the way Lynch froze and looked at her. She took a couple steps over towards him and asked him, "Do I know you?"

The second Lynch saw the girl, he knew that there was something familiar about her, but he just couldn't put his finger on it. As he continued to stare at her, it started coming back to him in little pieces.

"_That looks like Murdock."_

"_Freeze! United States Army!"_

_A figure in a bomber jacket and cap, half masked by the shadows of the night, started running at the command._

"_Freeze, Murdock, it's all over now!"_

_But the figure had persisted to give chase, and his men had followed relentlessly. He'd been the last to arrive. When he'd gotten there, two of the MPs already had him on the ground and were beating him with their guns and kicking him. He pushed his way to the front and saw the person writhing and groaning on the ground and about had a heart attack._

"_Stop! Stop! Stop it you idiots!" he grabbed them by the arms and jerked them back, "That's not Murdock!"_

_No, it wasn't Murdock at all, it wasn't even a man. It was a woman, possibly a teenaged girl. As soon as the assault stopped she could be heard moaning as she tried to move, she had been beaten so bad she couldn't even turn over. Her eyes were closed, he didn't know if they had been swollen shut from the beating or not._

"_My God!" He knelt down to help her up, "Miss, are you alright?"_

_She was slow to respond and couldn't speak, only moan and grunt. After a minute she got her eyes opened and pulled herself to her feet and demanded to know what the hell was going on._

That had been almost a year and a half ago, for a while he had forgotten about it. But seeing the same woman now brought it all back and he felt like he was going to be sick. She didn't seem to recognize him though, for which he was glad. He could still see her bloody and bruised in the street, sniping him for making such a mistake as to beat on an innocent civilian.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said to both women, "I think I've made a mistake." And he slowly backed away and showed himself to the door. On the way he just missed colliding with another young woman who was dressed in a pink dress, tall black boots, black sunglasses and had her hair done up in something resembling a feathered haircut.

"Geez," she said in a borderline Valley Girl accent, "Who's the old bum?"

"That's Colonel Lynch of the United States Army," Mrs. Rhodes answered, "He's here looking for some escaped men. This is my niece, Ronnie."

"H-h-how do you do?" Lynch asked skittishly as he proceeded to make his way to the door.

"Army, huh?" she asked, "Must be one of those schizos from Vietnam, they're all a bunch of loons."

Just before Lynch reached the front door, he turned back to them and said, "Forgive my intrusion, ladies…H-Happy Thanksgiving."

Mrs. Rhodes returned the greeting and showed him out and closed the door behind him. They watched as he walked back out to the curb and got in his car and left. Once he was gone, Amy and Jean yelped victoriously and high fived each other. Amy pulled off Jean's sunglasses and smoothed her hair out and Jean ran for the basement door and hollered down, "All clear!"

"Well…" they heard Hannibal's voice, muffled and echoed down below, then saw him appear at the foot of the stairs, "A little simplistic but I like it."

"Where're the others?" Jean asked.

"Oh," Hannibal nodded, "They're down here, why don't you come down and see them?"

Jean didn't get it, but she did it. She went down the stairs and followed Hannibal through the first room of the basement, down into the second room and stopped in the doorway when she saw the others.

Standing in the middle of the second room, where all the boxes of unused things were packed away until further notice, stood Murdock, his hands bound together with a string of Christmas lights and he was gagged with a silver tinsel garland, and B.A. was chuckling to himself as he hanged Christmas ornaments on the bound pilot.

"What happened?" Jean asked.

"Well, Murdock found the Christmas decorations," Face said by way of explanation, "Originally B.A. just started this to keep him quiet, but I guess he was having too much fun with it to stop there."

Murdock's head was tilted to the side and he looked at Jean with big puppy dog eyes that practically screamed 'help me', and it was obvious from the look on his face from the nose up that he was _not_ having a good time. Jean laughed and ruffled his hair and asked him, "Murdock, are you alright?"

He tried to say something in answer but it was muffled on the garland.

"Alright, B.A., you've had your fun," Hannibal said, "Now take down the Christmas tree."

"One minute, Hannibal, first I gotta plug him in," B.A. said, choking on a low chuckle.

He plugged the cord to the lights into an outlet on the work bench and they saw Murdock's restraints light up in little spots of red, green, yellow and blue, Hannibal and Face applauded the show, Murdock's face grew a nice shade of red to match some of the ornaments hanging off of him.

"Alright, let's get him undone," Jean said as she unwound the tinsel in his mouth.

"Pah, bleck," Murdock spat as the garland was removed, "Thanks."

"I'm not sure I even want to know," Jean said as she starting to untie the lights from his arms and around his stomach.

"Jean, are you sure that Lynch bought it?" Face asked.

"You should've seen him, I thought he was going to have a heart attack," Jean said.

"Well we were able to hear most of it through the air vents," Hannibal told her, "Sounds like you had him from the get-go."

"And I didn't even have to remind him who I was," Jean said, "That was the best part. That way, if we ever cross paths again, I can claim a post traumatic shock at suddenly remembering where we'd met before."

Before they took refuge in the basement, Jean had run her plan by them very quickly; she would come out to see Lynch when he came into the house, and he would see the jacket and the cap, and if he had anything resembling a brain in his skull, he would remember the poor young woman his men battered half to death last year because they thought she _was_ Murdock. That would be the easy part, but there were two ways that it could go; either she could pretend that she didn't know him and didn't remember what had happened, and let his memory and guilt eat at him, or, if it seemed that Lynch wasn't putting the pieces together quickly enough, she would throw a hysterical tantrum to end them all, recoiling at the horror of last seeing this man amidst the pack of guerrillas who tried to beat her to death. Either way they couldn't lose, that was the way she saw it anyway, and she seemed to be right.

"How did you know it would work though?" Face asked her.

She flashed a self assured smirk and said, "Well if you'd been there that night they were treating me like fresh hamburger, and seen that look on his face when he realized how badly they screwed up, you'd know how. Lynch is not a particularly bright person but he does strike me as having just a _little_ bit more heart than our old friend Decker. I think if Decker had been leading that punch happy brigade he would've assisted in stomping me to death for getting in his way and leading him on a wild goose chase."

"Are you sure he's gone though?" Face asked.

"We saw him leave, I doubt he'll be back," she laughed and said, "He looked like he'd seen a ghost."

Hannibal chuckled as he reached into his pocket for a new cigar and said, "Good work, kid."

* * *

As it came closer to noon and the rest of the food was being cooked, everybody was getting anxious for it to get done so they all could eat. To pass the time, B.A., Face and Hannibal watched a game on TV, Murdock paced back and forth from the kitchen to the living room and back again, and Jean decided to chew the fat with Amy for a while, who was still composing a rough draft for her new story. She ran her idea by Jean, who gave her full attention and listened to the suggestion before offering her own two bits on the subject.

"Well," she said as she scratched her head, "It _is_ always different to see something in print instead of just knowing it, and it is a good point, all the time and resources and manpower wasted trying to catch the A-Team. But I think you need a different angle with it."

"Like what?" Amy asked.

"Well think about this," Jean said, "Translated into American currency, the A-Team stole one million dollars from the Bank of Hanoi, now their reasons why don't matter, all that the army looks at is they took the money. Okay, the money was recovered, _but_ you get Face the money man to run down a rough estimate of how much it has cost the army to repair and replace their cars and helicopters, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition wasted, get a grand total and run that against the amount of money taken in the first place to cause this whole mess. I'll just bet you with 10 years' of crashes and gunfights that it'll add up to being _very_ close…you know, point out why are we chasing these guys who didn't even keep the money, when the army has wasted just as much, if not more, in tax dollars, chasing these guys. And _then_ you factor in how much money they have saved common civilians by taking their protection mobsters and union sharks out of business."

Amy considered this idea and nodded, "It's a plan."

"Exactly," Jean said, "I mean there's got to be _something_ that'll knock some sense into those idiots at the Pentagon. I mean it's hardly like they're chasing after dangerous criminals."

Amy laughed and asked, "You don't think so?"

"No," Jean answered, "Only when they have to be, but for the most part they're more like a bunch of rambunctious children…and speaking of which…"

Amy turned her attention to where Jean was looking and saw Murdock come shuffling in, his hands thrust in his jacket pockets, his head low, and he was mumbling something to himself. He about tripped over everybody's feet as he stopped and asked them all one by one if he could sit with them, and three times they said no.

"You can sit down over here, Murdock," Amy said from where they sat on the loveseat beside the couch.

"Thank you," he said as he scurried over to their side of the room and sat down between them.

"So how's it going in the kitchen, Murdock?" Jean asked.

"Well your dad's getting the turkey cut up and your mom's putting the rolls in to brown, so I guess we ought to be eating soon."

"Good," she replied, "I'm so hungry I could eat the next thing I see, whatever it is."

Murdock glanced over at her and tried subtly to get up and move, but he tripped and fell back against Amy. He turned to see her and she had an amused look on her face as she asked him jokingly, "Getting a little big to be sitting on mommy's lap, aren't you?"

Murdock laughed sheepishly and got up, repositioning himself in the middle of the loveseat.

"Murdock," Amy thought of something, "How come none of you guys slept here the other night?"

"Oh they couldn't have done that," Jean said, "For one thing, it's too short, anybody's feet would be sticking clear out over the edge, and for another, this whole end of it is weak and the arm collapses when too much weight's put on it. Actually I'm surprised they never got rid of this thing, they were talking about throwing it out when I moved last spring."

Murdock leaned over to her and murmured something in her ear, but she elbowed him to move back when she saw her mother come into the dining room. Mrs. Rhodes announced that lunch was ready, and everybody jumped up, but before they could take tearing off for the kitchen, Hannibal had everybody line up single file and stand at attention before he gave the command, "CHARGE!" and off they ran like a pack of rhinos.

Face slapped Murdock's hands away as he grabbed for slices of the turkey on the serving tray and said to him, "Murdock, what would Emily Post say?"

"I don't know, I never dated her," Murdock replied as he grabbed two large pieces of the turkey with his hand and moved his plate down the table like a prison cafeteria line.

"She'd say come and get it," Jean told Face, "Just ask the 3 Stooges."

Everybody got their plates loaded up and a glass of water, coke or milk and again in single file moved out of the kitchen and in to the dining room where they all sat down and talked amongst themselves while they waited for Jean's parents to join them. When Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes sat down, everybody became quiet and Mrs. Rhodes asked that grace be said before the meal. Everybody bowed their heads, closed their eyes and lightly placed their hands together, and everybody was stunned when they heard that the person speaking, was Hannibal.

The others each opened one eye and looked at him as he looked up and said solemnly, "Well Sir, we've certainly much to be thankful for today. Overall I'd say this has been a fairly good year for all of us, Jean has gone out into the world and made a cozy place for herself over on the west coast, Murdock has finally found his own freedom in release from the V.A. hospital and can to an extent, walk out in public and be counted among the everyday people who take the same liberties for granted, and of course any day we don't wake up behind bars is always a good day for us. We're thankful for being able to come together today and have this time to ourselves in peace, our enemies and our troubles momentarily forgotten, of course I've always been a firm believer in divine intervention, and truth be told that's probably what's kept us going for as long as we have. I just ask that things will continue to go well for all of us here: watch over Jean, let her parents know that she's alright, keep Amy Allen safe whenever she gets bullheaded enough to come with us on a job," he didn't miss the glare coming out of her one open eye and smirked in response, and added, "And that we will be able to continue doing what we do, to help others and to keep ourselves out of the army's line of fire until further notice. Amen."

"Amen," everybody seconded and straightened up in their chairs.

Jean leaned back in her chair and said to Hannibal, half cynically, "Wow…that was good."

Hannibal chuckled and replied, "Well I've had a little experience, the last 10 years have really been a religious experience."

"Really?" Mrs. Rhodes asked.

"Yeah, every time we see red lights in our rear mirror, it becomes a great time for praying," Face explained.

Once again small talk invaded the dinner table, but today Hannibal noticed that it came easier for everyone involved, including Jean. _Now_ she looked like she belonged here, this was her home, this was her family, this was her place, and it showed. He glanced around at the others and noted that Face also seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood today, and just as well, this was the first time the lieutenant ever got to spend Thanksgiving with an actual family, and he was taking well to the experience. He looked next to B.A. and noted an unmistakable look on the Sergeant's face; it was still hard for him to be here instead of in Chicago with his mother, but Hannibal could tell that this was a close second for the man.

Then he looked to Murdock and smiled to himself as he noticed that Murdock's eyes were trained on the woman sitting next to him, he spoke to the others but he never stopped looking at Jean; Hannibal wanted to laugh, the Captain had it bad. He came back to reality and resumed eating his lunch, once they got back to Los Angeles, things would be back to normal, and those two would have a chance to catch up on whatever was going on between them. He also remembered what Jean had said before they left for New York, and realized they'd be getting back just in the nick of time, by the time Murdock went back with Jean to her house, there should be one large surprise waiting for him in her upstairs storage room, and he was looking forward to seeing the look on the Captain's face when that happened.

Hannibal turned to Mrs. Rhodes who was seated beside him and he said to her, "I'm not familiar with your cooking but you've outdone yourself, Mrs. Rhodes, this is the best turkey I've had in 20 years."

"It's probably the _only_ turkey you've had in 20 years," Amy responded.

Hannibal glanced over at her mockingly and told her, "Be quiet."

Amy laughed over her bite of pumpkin pie and whipped cream.

* * *

By 1:30 that afternoon, lunch was over, the worst of the dishes had been done, and everybody had succumbed to the post-Thanksgiving meal lethargy. Hannibal and B.A. had fallen asleep in the living room watching the football game, Jean's parents had excused themselves to their bedroom to lie down for a while, and Face, Amy, Jean and Murdock had all crammed together on her bed to take a nap until close to dinner. Murdock had complained that it was easier to squeeze four people into the front seat of a convertible than it was on her bed, so to keep from rolling off the end and give everybody a little more breathing room, he'd pulled Jean on top of him so they only took up the space of one on their side. He groaned and told Jean, "I ate too much."

"I'm surprised you could put it all away," she told him, "You must have a hollow leg."

"Hey," he said, "It wasn't that bad, at least I didn't do what B.A. did."

They both laughed remembering how B.A. had eaten a whole pie by himself, holding the tin in one hand and a fork in the other.

"I'd hate to see what he could do with a wedding cake," Murdock said with a low groan and a burp, "You know, those eight foot tall cakes, give him an hour and I'll bet you he could eat the _whooooollle_ thing." He hummed and closed his eyes and told Jean, "When we get married remember to get two cakes, that way we'll all be able to get a piece."

Jean smiled down at him and asked, "You have a time in mind for that?"

"Hmmmm…not yet," he answered, "What do you think about Christmas?"

"What year?" Jean asked coyly.

"That's the part I haven't figured out yet," he told her.

Jean laughed and told him, "We'll talk about it when we get home. Murdock, you know Hannibal told my mom about us?"

"He did?" Murdock looked surprised.

"Well…he said you were moving in with me since you're out of the V.A. now," she said, "So that's one step in the right direction anyway. But I told her not to worry, you already had your hands full with another squeeze."

"Oh yeah? Who?" Murdock asked.

Jean nodded her head over to Amy, and Murdock laughed so hard he about threw her off of him.

"Well," he said, "I'd say Faceman's had a great time today." He looked over at the sleeping lieutenant and smirked at the big smile on his face.

"I think he's gotten a real kick out of having my mom fuss over him, probably does her some good too since she can't really do it with me anymore," Jean said, then dropped her head on Murdock's chest and said, "I'm starting to dread leaving tomorrow."

"It's only natural," he told her, "But when we get back home things will get back to whatever passes as 'normal' and the feeling will pass."

"Yeah, I guess so," she reluctantly agreed.

"Hey," he got her to look at him and he said, "Remember when you said we had more fun having to sneak around to be together?"

"Yeah, so?"

He smirked and said into her ear, "Meet me in the basement tonight after the others have gone to bed."

She turned her head and looked down at him inquisitively and asked, "Why?"

"You'll see, my dear," he replied in a self assured tone.

Jean laughed into his jacket and said, "My mother always said when I met somebody to fall in love with they'd be a real weirdo, who knew she'd be right?"

* * *

When it was time for dinner, only half of the people at the table had any real appetite for another helping of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Murdock, Face and Amy pushed their food around on their plates as they made casual dinner conversation with the others more than they actually ate anything; but it seemed that Face's prediction would prove right, after tonight there wouldn't be any leftovers to put away.

"I'm surprised that the wishbone's even left," Face said as he picked it out of the remains of the turkey carcass.

"So let's snap it and see who gets their wish," Amy said.

"No, you can't do that," Murdock told her, "It's no good when it's fresh, it has to dry out for about a week, then when it's nice and petrified _then_ you break it."

Jean put the bone in her unused napkin and said, "He's right, I'll take it back with me, then when it's hard as a brick then we can see who gets what they want."

Face pushed himself up from the table, covered his mouth as a burp escaped him, and thanked Mrs. Rhodes for the wonderful meal, and the others followed suit. Jean's mother just smiled and said, "Thank you for bringing our daughter home for the day, and thank you for joining us, this is the best time we've had in years."

Murdock moaned and groaned and held his stomach as he got up from the table, but still inquired if there was any cherry pie left so he could get another piece, and everyone about fell down laughing at that.

"So now what do you do after dinner?" Face asked, "Just collapse on the couch and decompose?"

"Sort of," Jean answered as they waddled in to the living room, "Every year this one channel shows an old version of A Christmas Carol and we always watch it on Thanksgiving."

"That's getting an early start, isn't it?" Face asked.

"Might be, but we like it," Jean said as she knelt down and pressed the ON button on the top of the TV and pressed the down channel button.

Everybody got settled down; Mr. Rhodes sat in his recliner, Mrs. Rhodes sat with Hannibal and B.A. on the couch, Face and Amy sat on the loveseat, and Murdock and Jean sat on the floor like a couple of kids as they watched the old black and white film. Halfway through the movie, Hannibal looked over at the others and smiled to himself; for one day anyway, they had been able to find peace and contentment with a family, and staring at the two down on the floor he grinned even wider as he considered the possibility that someday the two families would be joined together, and expanded upon. He leaned back against the cushioning of the couch and enjoyed the rest of the movie.


	8. Chapter 8

Author's note: Here is the last chapter and I hope everybody enjoys it and has enjoyed this (notably shorter) story!

"Ooooooooohhhhhhhh," Murdock groaned as he stood up and put both hands on his stomach, "I shouldn't have eaten that last after dinner mint."

"Very funny," Face said, "Murdock you know you shouldn't try eating as much as B.A., he's got at least 80 pounds on you."

"Yeah, and a much bigger stomach to store it all in," Jean added, holding her arms as far out as she could stretch them.

"Don't let him hear you say that," Face warned her, "Or he might forget his position and rearrange your face."

"If he didn't do it to you when you let him get shot…" Jean reminded him.

"That was _not_ my fault," he replied.

"He said it was," she said.

"Yeah well…"

"Hey, that reminds me," Jean said, "Just _how_ are you guys going to get B.A. knocked out to get him on the plane tomorrow? He knows it's coming."

"Don't worry, we always find a way," Hannibal told her, "We're leaving tomorrow at 10 o' clock."

"That's too late to spike his breakfast," Jean said, "We're all going to be up before that."

"Do you still have that nose spray bottle?" Face asked her.

Murdock elbowed Face to shut up when he saw B.A. coming out of the kitchen.

"Alright, now Jean's parents have already gone up for the night, so let's try and keep it down," Hannibal told the others, "It's very rude to keep the hosts up all night."

"No problem," Face said as he walked over to the sleeping bags on the floor, "I am exhausted, I'm not getting up tonight for anything."

"But what if…" Murdock started to ask, but the tired and cranky lieutenant cut him off.

"Murdock, I don't care if Bigfoot comes in here, I don't care if Martians land and give us 24 hours to surrender, and I don't care if the Easter Elephant comes hopping down the street on his way to the South Pole, I'm not waking up for it."

Murdock stood stiff as a board and looked at Face curiously, and after a few seconds finally gave voice to the thought that was puzzling him so, "…Easter Elephant?"

"Oh great, now you're encouraging him," Jean said.

"Face," Hannibal chimed in.

"WHAT?!" Face exploded just as he'd gotten on the floor by his bed.

"Go upstairs," Hannibal told him.

"Huh?"

"When Amy comes upstairs for the night she'll send you back down, but you won't get any rest down here with all of us still up," Hannibal explained.

Face sighed and ran a hand over the side of his face as if he had a migraine, and then reluctantly pulled himself up and left the living room.

"What's he so crabby about?" Jean asked.

"Aw Faceman always gets cranky when he's tired," Murdock said, "He's not the most pleasant person to bunk with for the night but there you have it anyway. Besides, he's probably just dreading leaving tomorrow."

"Why?" Jean asked, "You'd think he'd be thrilled, get out of here and go back where it's warm and sunny all the time and he can have his pick of all the lemons in greater California."

"Lemons?" Amy asked.

"Squeezes," Jean answered.

"All of that is true, however I think the problem is he's leaving something here that he won't have when he gets back home," Hannibal said, "The first mother figure he's had in his life outside of those nuns at St. Bartholomew's."

Jean nodded understandingly and said, "Yeah I can see how that would suck, but he'll get over it in time, won't he?"

"Of course he will," Hannibal told her, "Just a matter _of_ time. I figure…give him a couple of days, a chance to skim through his little black book, and he ought to be back to his usual whining and dining self."

Jean looked at Murdock and asked him, "Did I hear that right?"

Murdock nodded and said in a semi-nasally voice, "Awwww but I don't wanna do my homework!"

Hannibal chuckled and told Jean, "Hold the fort down, I'm going out for a little while."

"Where're you going?" Amy asked.

"I'm going to find a phone booth and call my agent," Hannibal said, "There's a new part in a movie coming up and I want to make sure I'm in the lead for it."

Jean snorted and remarked, "Actors."

"Never mind him," Murdock told her, "While he's gone let's enjoy the quiet." When Hannibal left the room, Murdock leaned over to Jean and murmured into her ear, "Remember what I said about tonight."

Jean tried to ask how she was supposed to meet him down there after the others had gone to sleep when they would know he was absent from the living room in the first place, but he dismissed the question. They settled on the couch until Hannibal returned and watched TV, then as the night got later and everybody got ready for bed, they resumed watching from their place on the floor.

* * *

Jean didn't remember falling asleep but when she woke up, the room was dark and quiet. She remembered what Murdock said about meeting him downstairs and she got up and checked first to see if Hannibal or B.A. moved. When they didn't, she took it as a sign that it was time to find out what his surprise was.

Tiptoeing through the kitchen, Jean found the basement door open and the first light on. Making her way as quietly down the creaky wooden steps as was possible, she saw that the second light in the first room was also on, leading the way to the second room, but the light wasn't on in there.

"Murdock?" she called out quietly.

He didn't respond but she heard some small noise come from the second room, so she placed her hands along the wooden frame built against the brick walls and stepped down the two large limestone steps leading into the room. All was dark for a second, and then there was light, to be exact, she noticed, it was a string of Christmas lights strung up over her father's old workbench. She also noticed the silver garland had been hung up above the bench so the colors of the light caught in the tinsel.

"Okay, I give up," Jean said as she stepped further into the room, "What's going on?"

She caught Murdock's outline hunched over one of the boxes the Christmas decorations were in and she went over to see what he was doing. The light in the room wasn't great but she was able to see him pull out a large glass Christmas snow globe in his hand, and turned it over to find the key.

"Does this still play?" he asked.

"Yes," Jean said, and pointed into the box to another, "But the song on this one's better."

Murdock nodded and put the first one back and pulled out the second, wound up the key and set the globe on top of another box and listened to the merry Christmas carol playing. He grabbed Jean's hands in his and pulled her over to the middle of the floor where there was some space to move around and improvised a dance that Jean quickly joined in on.

"So this was your little surprise," she said.

"Yeah, I got the idea right before B.A. thought it would be funny to use me as a tree," he said.

"Could be worse," she told him, "He could've made you a fat little ornament and _hung_ you on the tree. Or even worse, he might've used you as the angel."

"Ouch," Murdock replied as he considered that possibility.

Jean listened to the music for a little while before she thought of something, "I suppose I'm going to have to get used to Christmas being warm and green now. Might be an improvement over freezing to death every winter, but I think I _am_ going to miss the snow once in a while."

"It won't be so bad, you'll see," Murdock told her, "Hey, you ever go to a water park on Christmas?"

Jean laughed at that suggestion.

"You know," she said to him, "I must've left my head somewhere else when I moved."

"Why's that?" he asked.

"Because when I packed up my stuff, it never occurred to me to take any of the Christmas decorations, and they're just as much mine as my parents', it's my life history too, my legacy. Sure, I can buy new and those will be my history alone, but I had a beginning too, I deserve to have it with me."

"Your mother said something about that earlier," Murdock told her, "So I told her I'd help you sort through the stuff tonight and pick out what you're going to take back to California."

Jean pulled back and stared at him and asked, "Is there anything that you _can't_ do, Murdock?"

"I'm sure there must be, I'd like to find out someday," he replied.

"You know one of these days I'm going to have to tell her about us," Jean said.

"I know, I have nothing to hide," he said. He raised her hand up to see and added, "I'd give you a ring when we made it official if I thought you'd wear it, but I know you wouldn't."

Jean shook her head happily, "I don't wear jewelry, never did. And then look at how much B.A. wears."

Murdock laughed and said, "True, true, people don't call him a walking jewelry store for nothing." A small sound escaped his throat before he realized it.

"Are you alright?" Jean asked.

"Yeah I was just thinking," he said, "I used to have a ring I could've given you when we got married, but I lost it back in 1973."

"What ring?" she asked.

"It was my Captain Midnight decoder ring," he answered with a hint of nostalgia in his voice as he recalled.

Jean laughed and replied, "I appreciate it, Murdock, but I doubt I would've worn that either."

"Oh well," he sighed, "I'm sure I can come up with something else before we re-tie the knot."

"Murdock," Jean said.

"Huh?" he tilted his head down to her.

Jean kissed him and replied, "Thanks for doing this. I've really had a great time here."

"I've had a great time here too," he told her, "We're going to have to come back here soon. Now, you realize when we _do_ get married, I want the guys all there, B.A. and Hannibal and Faceman, all of them."

"Of course, but you also realize we'll have to have my parents there as well," Jean reminded him.

"Of course," he agreed, "Only fair, both families involved and all."

Jean groaned and buried her head into his shoulder as they continued to dance in small circles, "I'm already opting for another elopement."

* * *

Hannibal listened to the conversation down below with a big grin on his face as he sat beside the opened air vent in the corner of the living room. This was better than TV, in fact it reminded him of his early years when television had been invented but wasn't a widespread epidemic yet and everybody still relied on sitting by their radio listening to the evening broadcasts for their entertainment needs.

He remembered many a nights parked by the radio, and he remembered what Murdock said about his Captain Midnight decoder ring. Now _there_ was a program, too bad they mutilated it when it came to TV years later. Oh, everybody else loved it, but to him, there was just something about putting the most famous action hero of the radio waves on TV and showing the world what he looked like, leaving nothing to anybody's imagination. Sure, he was grown up by that time and his taste might've changed, but it seemed to dash his childhood hero to pieces to see what he actually looked like, something about it just didn't match with the person he'd built up in his hyperactive mind. In his opinion it was just as bad as when the movies decided to not only give a face, but a real identity to The Shadow. He loved the industry of Hollywood, he'd cut his teeth in it, but there were times when the business proved it had no ethics.

Downstairs, the music stopped, the program had ended for the night. Rising on his knees, Hannibal closed the air vent and got up, quietly making his way back over to the recliner where he got himself settled down for the night and pretended to be asleep a few minutes later when he heard Murdock and Jean coming up from the basement. He was surprised when he heard them walk past the living room and out to the front hall and upstairs, but he didn't think much of it. He knew that they were going to have plenty of company up there, and they did.

When they went into Jean's room and closed the door they saw that Face and Amy were both asleep in the bed, and this time they weren't sleeping with a kitchen ladle between them. Neither of them said anything because they didn't want to wake the others up, but Jean could tell from the look on Murdock's face that he thought they looked cute together. She supposed they did, but all she could think about was the sudden urge she had to poke them with a stick and see if they moved.

Murdock stole the quilt that was thrown over the foot of the bed and took his jacket off and folded it up for a makeshift pillow. Jean joined him on the floor, it was cold but they both knew it would've been worse on the first floor downstairs. Murdock laid down on the floor and she laid down on him and he wrapped them both up in the quilt like a burrito and kissed her goodnight. They were both out like a light within a couple of minutes.

* * *

The next morning Hannibal crept upstairs and found the four of them asleep, two in the bed and two on the floor, first he made his way to Murdock and Jean and woke them up, and while they were still in the process of coming around, he went over to the bed and gave Face a hard shove to get his attention, which in turn pushed him against Amy and woke her up.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"It's time to get up," he told them.

Face yawned and turned over and asked, "What time is it?"

"Almost seven."

Face craned his neck to look over at the window by the opposite side of the bed and he commented, "Something's wrong with the window, it's all fogged up."

Amy crawled out from under the covers, got up on her knees and pulled up the venetian blind and said, "That's not fog, Face, it's frost…it snowed last night."

"No wonder it was so cold," Murdock said.

Face got up and looked over Amy's shoulder and saw that everything outside had a light white coating to it. "Nice," he said, "That'd make a nice postcard, now let's get packed up and get out of here and back to L.A. where it's warm."

Amy giggled and replied, "Typical Face, always has to find something to complain about."

"Hey you're from California too, given a choice why would _you_ want to be in this weather?" he asked her as he more or less fell out of the bed and onto the floor.

* * *

Murdock had been more enthusiastic about the snow. Even though there hadn't been enough to actually do anything, that morning after breakfast he ran around the yard basking in the cold whiteness and the frozen air.

"That fool really is crazy, Hannibal," B.A. said as they got the car packed up.

"Oh come on, B.A., didn't you used to play in the snow when you were a kid?" Face asked.

B.A. ignored his question. Murdock stopped running around the yard and instead started to creep up behind B.A., his arms and legs as far apart from each other as was possible, so he walked stiffly as he narrated, "The killer polar bear spots its unsuspecting prey and slowly closes in, moving in for the kill…"

Without even turning around, B.A. said to Murdock, "Try anything with me, sucker, and I'll make a skin rug out of you."

Murdock shifted gears and froze in mid-step, then he squeezed his legs together and waddled off in an opposite direction, replying, "Nobody here but us penguins."

Jean and Amy laughed at the spectacle as they came out of the house with their bags and also tossed them into the car's trunk.

"Your mother seems to be holding up very well," Amy noted.

"Well she's never been the type to fall apart in front of company, she'll wait until we've left and _then_ she'll explode," Jean said as she handed a small box to Murdock to put in the trunk with their bags.

"What's that?" Face asked.

"Just some stuff for Christmas," Jean answered. Before they'd gone upstairs for the night, she and Murdock had rifled through the boxes of decorations and packed up a few she was going to take back to Los Angeles wit her. She walked over to Hannibal and grabbed him by the lapel of his jacket and said, "You mind if I have a word with you?"

He walked over to the porch stairs with her and asked, "What's up?"

"You still haven't said how we're going to get B.A. back on the plane and it's almost time to leave, what's the plan?" Jean asked.

"Don't worry, you're gonna love it," he said by way of explanation.

"I'll believe that when I see it," she said as she walked back to the car.

Hannibal was about to follow after her when he heard the front door open and heard Mrs. Rhodes call out, "Oh Mr. Smith, before you go," and he turned around to see her.

Jean was right, Mrs. Rhodes knew how to hold herself together, even now she looked like she hadn't a care in the world, though he knew better, he'd had a mother after all.

"Before you go," she said again as she reached the bottom stair, "I just wanted to thank you again for bringing Jean home for the holiday, you don't know how much it meant to us to have her here."

"I think I have a pretty good idea," he said, "I remember what it meant for my mother when I came home."

Mrs. Rhodes nodded, and lowered her voice so the others wouldn't hear her and she said to Hannibal, "Please keep an eye on my daughter, Mr. Smith, I know she'll be safe if you do."

Hannibal nodded and told her, "You have my word, we'll keep her out of trouble." Well, one kind anyway.

A final round of goodbyes was said before everybody piled into the car and they left.

"Well, at this rate we ought to be taking off on schedule," Face said as he checked the time on his watch, "All Murdock has to do is get the Gulfstream refueled and we'll be ready."

"Hey Hannibal, I ain't going on no plane," B.A. told him.

"B.A. would you be reasonable for once?" Murdock asked, "How else are we going to get back to L.A. on time?"

"Hey sucker," B.A. grabbed Murdock by his jacket tight enough to start choking him, "If we gotta fly then you gonna die, I told you before I ain't getting on no plane."

"Hannibal, would you talk some sense into him, please?" Face asked.

"Well you know," Hannibal looked up from the road ahead and checked the rear mirror and told the others, "I think B.A. might have a point."

"What?" the others asked.

Hannibal returned his attention to his driving and said, "You know, B.A., last night I called Chicago and found out your mother is back from her trip, so I had the idea that you could go on down to visit with her for a while and then catch up with us back in L.A. later on."

"Yeah, now I like _that_ plan," he responded, much to everybody else's relief.

"Good, because it just so happens there's a train leaving for Chicago in 20 minutes and I figure we ought to just make it for you to get on," Hannibal told him.

"Well," Face commented, "I guess this makes a happy ending for everyone."

* * *

"So last night when you said you were calling back to Hollywood, you talked to B.A.'s mother instead?" Face asked after they dropped the sergeant off at the train station and returned to the airport where Murdock was refueling the jet.

"Yep," Hannibal answered bluntly, "Had you convinced, didn't I?"

"You know," Amy said, "You can be a pretty amazing person when you _want_ to be."

"Oh yeah? What does that make me the rest of the time?" he asked.

"A pain in the neck colonel," Jean answered as she came up to him, "I told you that before."

"Ha ha, very funny," Hannibal replied.

"Alright guys!" Murdock called as he came up to them, "The mama bird's been fed and we're ready to go."

"Good," Hannibal said, "Everybody already got their luggage on the plane?"

"Yes," they answered.

"I'll be glad to get home," Amy commented with a small shiver.

"I know what you mean," Murdock said as he came up to her, "I've gotta get caught up on my mail," he reached into a pocket on his jacket and took out some blank envelopes and read them over, "Jury duty, eviction notice, chain letter, pink slip…oh here's a telegram…" he pulled the yellow sheet of paper out from the pile and read, " 'Dear Ricky Schroder please come to the front desk, your roller skates are illegally parked'," and everybody did a double take at that one, Murdock shook his head and stuffed that back in his pocket and grumbled, "Last time I stay at that hotel. Alright," he resumed a professional manner and told the others, "All aboard!"

"Well, the way home ought to be better than the way out," Face said as they headed up the stairs, "We don't have to worry about B.A. waking up and trying to kill us."

"Good thing too," Hannibal said as he pulled out his customized blackjack that now was bent, "About broke my new 'cigar' on the trip here alone."

Everybody found a seat and got strapped in. Jean went to the cockpit and strapped herself in beside him, still holding onto the box she'd brought with her, explaining to him, "I'm not taking any chances on these getting tossed around incase you decide to go nutty and turn this plane upside down or something."

Murdock laughed and said, "Not a bad idea, I'll have to try that sometime."

"So what time do you think we'll make it home?" Jean asked him as the plane started to take off.

"Well it's 10 o' clock now," he said, "I'll have us landed in time for dinner."

"Oh, that reminds me," Jean said, "Before we left, my mom made some sandwiches for the flight, I just hope Face hasn't eaten them all already."

Murdock laughed and replied, "You don't know Face very well, he eats like a bird."

"Sure, a pterodactyl."

* * *

Meanwhile, back in the cabin, Face looked out the window and saw how high up they'd gotten already, and Amy had her notebook out again and was scribbling something else out.

"You still working on that article?" Hannibal asked her.

"I think it makes a good point, Hannibal, and I'm going to publish it," she said.

"You can _try_," he told her, "Your editor has to approve it."

"They have every other story about you," she reminded him.

Over the speaker they heard Murdock's voice, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for flying Murdock Airlines, where we are completing our round trip back to L.A. from New York, you may notice we are traveling at a slightly higher altitude due to unexpectedly losing 270 pounds before takeoff. Our in-flight movie is 'No Highway in the Sky' and if you think that's in poor taste, wait'll you try the food. Please sit back and relax as we endure 7 hours of hopefully smooth air and clear skies on this lovely Black Friday, one of the busiest travel days in the United States."

They listened to Murdock's broadcast for a couple more minutes, and then it was replaced by his singing.

"Well," Face said, "I guess it's going to be back to business as usual, back to being on the lookout for Decker and the MPs at every turn."

"Of course," Hannibal replied.

"Oh well," Face sighed as he folded his arms against his chest, "A little vacation was nice while it lasted."

"That's the spirit," Hannibal said.

"Hey Hannibal, tell me something," Amy said, "What exactly possessed you to decide running around in rubber monster suits was a good day job?"

He smiled over his cigar and said, "Well kid, I guess I just can't get away from the movie business, it's in my blood." With a hint of an Irish accent he added, "Me dear departed father was a movie man, he built his life in the business and taught me everything he knew, just can't get away from it after you've been bitten by that bug."

Amy looked at him like she was trying to read him and asked, "Is this like the time you said you were a rancher?"

He let out a slow puff of smoke and asked her, "What do you think?"

She looked at him in a scrutinizing manner for a few more seconds before concluding, "I'm not sure."

He grinned at her and said, "Well, it's a start."


End file.
